Part 12 (1/2)

Kronstadt was getting ready, however, to take a more signi.cant revenge. The baiting of the bourgeois press had-made it a factor of all-national importance. ”Fortifying itself in Kronstadt,” writes Miliukov, ”Bolshevism with the help of suitably trained agitators threw out widely over Russia a net of propaganda. Kronstadt emissaries were sent also to the front, where they undermined discipline, and to the rear, into the villages, where they incited to the sacking of estates. The Kronstadt Soviet gave these emissaries special mandates: 'N. N. has been sent to his province to be present with the right of a deciding vote in the county, district and village committees, and also to speak at meetings and call meetings at his own discretion where ever he wants to,' with 'the right to bear arms, with unhindered and free transportation on all railroads and steams.h.i.+ps.' And therewith 'the inviolability of the person of the said agitator is guaranteed by the Soviet of the City of Kronstadt.' ”

In exposing the undermining work of the Baltic sailors Miliukov only forgets to explain how and why, notwithstanding the presence of learned authorities, inst.i.tutions and news-papers, solitary sailors armed with this strange mandate of the Kronstadt Soviet travelled all over the country without hindrance, found food and lodging everywhere, were admitted to all popular meetings, everywhere attentively listened to, and left the imprint of a sailor's hand on the events of history. The historian in the service of liberal politics does not ask himself this simple question. But the Kronstadt miracle was thinkable only because the sailors far more deeply expressed the demands of historic evolution than the very intel-ligent professors. The semi-literate mandate was, to speak in the language of Hegel real because it was reasonable, whereas the subjectively most intelligent plans were spectral because the reason of history was not even camping in them for the night.

The soviets lagged behind the shop committees. The shop committees lagged behind the ma.s.ses. The soldiers lagged behind the workers. Still more the provinces lagged behind the capital. Such is the inevitable dynamic of a revolutionary process, which creates thousands of contradictions only in order accidentally and in pa.s.sing, as though in play, to resolve them and immediately create new ones. The party also lagged behind the revolutionary dynamic-an organisation which has the least right to lag, especially in a time of revolu-tion. In such workers' centres as Ekaterinburg, Perm, Tula, Nizhni-Novgorod, Sormovo, Kolomna, Yuzovka, the Bolsheviks separated from the Mensheviks only at the end of May. In Odessa, Nikolaev, Elisavetgrad, Poltava and other points in the Ukraine, the Bolsheviks did not have independent organisations even in the middle of June. In Baku, Zlatioust, Bezhetsk, Kostroma, the Bolsheviks divided from the Mensheviks only towards the end of June. These facts cannot but seem surprising when you take into consideration that within four months the Bolsheviks are going to seize the power. How far the party during the war had fallen behind the molecular process in the ma.s.ses, and how far the March leaders.h.i.+p of Kamenev and Stalin lagged behind the gigantic historic tasks! The most revolutionary party which human history until this time had ever known was nevertheless caught unawares by the events of history. It reconstructed itself in the .res, and straightened out its ranks under the onslaught, of events. The ma.s.ses at the turning point were ”a hundred times” to the left of the extreme left party. The growth of the Bolshevik in.uence, which took place with the force of a natural historical process, reveals its own contradiction upon a closer examina-tion, its zigzags, its ebbs and .ows. The ma.s.ses are not h.o.m.ogeneous, and more over they learn to handle the .re of revolution only by burning their hands and jumping away. The Bolsheviks could only accelerate the process of education of the ma.s.ses. They patiently explained. And history this time did not take advantage of their patience.

While the Bolsheviks were resolutely winning the shops, factories and regiments, the elections to the democratic dumas gave an enormous and apparently growing advantage to the Compromisers. This was one of the sharpest and most enigmatical contradictions of the revolution. To be sure, the duma of the Vyborg district, which was purely proletarian, prided itself upon its Bolshevik majority. But that was an exception. In the city elections of Moscow in June, the Social Revolutionaries got more than 60 per cent of the votes. They themselves were astonished at this .gure, for they could not but feel that their in.uence was swiftly dwindling. In the effort to understand the mutual relation between the real development of the revolution and its re.ection in the mirrors of democracy the Moscow elections have an extraordinary interest. The vast layers of workers and soldiers were already hastily shaking off their Compromisist illusions. Meanwhile, the broadest layers of the small town people were also beginning to stir. For these scattered ma.s.ses the democratic elections offered almost the .rst, and in any case one of the very rare opportunities to show themselves politically. While the worker, yesterday's Menshevik or Social Revolutionary, gave his vote to the Bolshevik Party and drew the soldier along with him, the cabman, the deliveryman, the janitor, the market woman, the shopkeeper, his a.s.sistant, the teacher, in performing so heroic a deed as giving their vote to the Social Revolutionaries, for the .rst time emerged from political non-existence. The petty bourgeois layers belatedly voted for Kerensky because he personi.ed in their eyes the February revolution, which had only to-day seeped down to them. With its 60 per cent Social Revolutionary majority the Moscow Duma glowed with the last .are of a dying luminary. It was so also with all the other organs of democratic self-administration. Having barely arrived, they were already stricken with the impotence of belatedness. That meant that the course of the revolution depended upon the workers and soldiers, and not upon that human dust which had been kicked up and was dancing in the whirlwind of the revolution.

Such is the deep and at the same time simple dialectic of the revolutionary awakening of the oppressed cla.s.ses. The most dangerous of the aberrations of the revolution arises when the mechanical accountant of democracy balances in one column yesterday, to-day and to-morrow, and thereby impels the formal democrats to look for the head of the revolution where in reality is to be found its very heavy tail. Lenin taught his party to distinguish head from tail.

CHAPTER 22.

THE SOVIET CONGRESS AND THEJUNE DEMONSTRATION.

The .rst congress of the soviets, which sanctioned the offensive for Kerensky, a.s.sembled in Petrograd on June 3 in the building of the Cadet Corps. There were 820 delegates with a vote and 268 with a voice. They represented 305 local soviets, 53 district and regional organisations at the front, the rear inst.i.tutions of the army, and a few peasant organisations. The right to a vote was accorded to Soviets containing not less than 25,000 men. Soviets containing from 10,000 to 25,000 had a voice. On the basis of this ruleby the way, none too strictly observedwe may a.s.sume that over 20,000,000 people stood behind the soviets. Out of 777 delegates giving information as to their party allegiance, 285 were Social Revolutionaries, 248 Mensheviks, 105 Bolsheviks; a few belonged to less important groups. The left wingthe Bolsheviks, and the Internationalists adhering to themconst.i.tuted less than a .fth of the delegates. The congress consisted for the most part of people who had registered as socialists in March but got tired of the revolution by June. Petrograd must have seemed to them a town gone mad.

The Congress began by ratifying the banishment of Grimm, an unhappy Swiss socialist who had been trying to save the Russian revolution and the German social democracy by means of back-stage negotiations with the Hohenzollern diplomats. The demand of the left wing that they take up immediately the question of the coming offensive was rejected by an overwhelming majority. The Bolsheviks looked like a tiny group. But on that very day and perhaps hour, a conference of the factory and shop committees of Petrograd adopted, also with an overwhelming majority, a resolution that only a government of soviets could save the country.

The Compromisers, no matter how near-sighted they were, could not help seeing what 312.

was happening around them every day. In the session of June 4 the Bolshevik-hater, Lieber, evidently under the in.uence of the provincials, denounced the good-for-nothing commis-sars of the government to whom the power had not been surrendered in the provinces. ”A whole series of functions of the governmental organs have as a result gone over into the hands of the soviets, even when the soviets did not want them.” Those people had to complain to somebody even against themselves.

One of the delegates, a school teacher, complained to the congress that after four months of revolution there had not been the slightest change in the sphere of education. All of the old teachers, inspectors, directors, overseers of districts, many of them former members of the Black Hundreds, all of the old school programmes, reactionary textbooks, even the old a.s.sis tant ministers, remained peacefully at their posts. Only the czar's portraits had been removed to the attics, and these might any day be stuck back in their places.

The congress could not make up its mind to lift a hand against the State Duma, or against the State Council. Its timid ity before the reaction was covered up by the Menshevik orator Bogdanov with the remark that the Duma and the Soviet are ”dead and non-existent organisations anyway.” Martov, with his polemical wit, answered: ”Bogdanov proposes that we should declare the Duma dead but not make any attempt upon its life.”

The congress, in spite of its solid government majority, proceeded in an atmosphere of alarm and uncertainty. Patriotism had grown rather damp and gave out only lazy .ashes. It was obvious that the ma.s.ses were dissatis.ed, and the Bolsheviks were immeasurably stronger throughout the country, and especially in the capital, than at the congress. Re-duced to its elements, the quarrel between the Bolsheviks and the Compromisers invariably revolved around the question: With whom shall the democrats side, the imperialists or the workers? The shadow of the Entente stood over the congress. The question of the offensive was predetermined; the democrats had nothing to do but accede.

”At this critical moment,” preached Tseretelli, ”not one social force ought to be thrown out of the scales, so long as it may be useful to the cause of the people.” Such was the justi.cation for a coalition with the bourgeoisie. Seeing that the proletariat, the army, and the peasantry were upsetting their plans at every step, the democrats had to open a war against the people under guise of a war against the Bolsheviks. Thus Tseretelli had declared the Kronstadt sailors apostates in order not to throw out of his scales the Kadet Pepelyaev. The coalition was rati.ed by a majority of 543 votes against 126, with 52 abstaining.

The work of this enormous and .abby a.s.sembly in the Cadet Corps was distinguished by grandeur in the matter of declarations, and conservative stinginess in practical tasks. This laid on all its decisions a stamp of hopelessness and hypocrisy. The congress recognised the right of all Russian nationalities to self. determination, but gave the key to this problematic right not to the oppressed nations themselves, but to a future Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, in which the Compromisers hoped to be in a majority and capitulate before the imperialists, exactly as they had done in the government.

The congress refused to pa.s.s a decree on the eight-hour day. Tseretelli explained this side-stepping by the dif.culty of reconciling the interests of the different layers of the pop-ulation. As though any single great need in history was ever accomplished by ”reconciling interests,” and not by the victory of progressive interests over reactionary!

Grohman, a Soviet economist, introduced toward the end of the congress his inevitable resolution: as to. the oncoming economic catastrophe and the necessity of governmental regulation. The congress adopted this ritual resolution, but only so that everything might remain as before.

”Having deported Grimm,” wrote Trotsky, on the 7th of June, ”the congress returned to the order of the day. But capitalistic pro.ts remain as before inviolable for Skobelev and his colleagues. The food crisis is getting sharper every hour. In the diplomatic sphere the government is taking blow after blow. And .nally this so hysterically proclaimed offensive is obviously getting ready to come down on the nation, a monstrous adven hire.

”We should be willing to watch peacefully the sancti.ed activities of the ministersLvov TereshchenkoTseretellifor a number of months. We need time for our own preparations. But the underground mole digs too fast. With the help of the 'socialist' ministers the prob-lem of power may rise before the members of this congress a great deal sooner than any of us imagine”

Trying to s.h.i.+eld themselves from the ma.s.ses with a higher authority, the leaders dragged the congress into all current con.icts, pitilessly compromising it in the eyes of the Petrograd workers and soldiers. The most resounding episode of this kind was the incident about the summer home of Durnovo, an old czarist bureaucrat who had made himself famous as Minister of the Interior by putting down the revolution of 1905. The vacant home of this hated, and moreover dirty-handed, bureaucrat was seized by workers' organisations on the Vyborg sidechie.y because of the enormous gardens which became a favourite playground for children. The bourgeois press represented the place as a lair of pogromists and hold-up menthe Kronstadt of the Vyborg district. No one took the trouble to .nd out what the facts were. The government, carefully avoiding all important questions, undertook with fresh pa.s.sion to rescue this house. They demanded sanction for the heroic undertaking from the Executive Committee, and Tseretelli of course did not refuse. The Procuror gave an order to evict the group of anarchists from the place in twenty-four hours. Learning about the military activities in preparation, the workers sounded the alarm. The anarchists on their side threatened armed resistance. Twenty-eight factories proclaimed a protest strike. The Executive Committee issued a proclamation accusing the Vyborg workers of aiding the counter-revolution. After all these preliminaries a representative of justice and the militia penetrated into the lions' den. They found complete order reigning; the house was occupied by a number of workers' educational organisations. They were compelled to withdraw in shame. This history had, however, a further development.

On the 9th of June a bomb was exploded at the congress: in the morning's edition of Pravda appeared an appeal for a demonstration on the following day. Cheidze, who knew how to get scared, and was therefore inclined to scare others, announced in a voice from the tomb: ”If measures are not taken by the congress, to-morrow will be fatal.” The delegates lifted their heads in alarm.

The idea of a show-down between the Petrograd workers and soldiers and the congress was suggested by the whole situation. The ma.s.ses were urging on the Bolsheviks. The garrison especially was seethingfearing that in connection with the offensive they would be distributed among the regiments and scattered along the front. To this was united a bitter satisfaction with the ”Declaration of the Rights of the Soldier,” which had been a big backward step in comparison with ”Order No. I,” and with the r'egime actually established in the army. The initiative for the demonstration came from the military organisation of the Bolsheviks. Its leaders a.s.serted, and quite rightly as events showed, that if the party did not take the leaders.h.i.+p upon itself, the soldiers themselves would go into the streets. That sharp turn in the mood of the ma.s.ses, however, could not be easily apprehended, and hence there was a certain vacillation in the ranks of the Bolsheviks themselves. Volodarsky was not sure that the workers would come out on the street. There was fear, too, as to the possible character of the demonstration. Representatives of the military organisation declared that the soldiers, fearing attacks and reprisals, would not go out without weapons. ”What will come out of the demonstration' asked the prudent Tomsky, and demanded supplementary deliberations. Stalin thought that ”the fermentation among the soldiers is a fact; among the workers there is no such de.nite mood,” but nevertheless judged it necessary to show resistance to the government. Kalinin, always more inclined to avoid than welcome a battle, spoke emphatically against the demonstration, referring to the absence of any clear motive, especially among the workers: ”The demonstration will be purely arti.cial.” On June 8, at a conference with the representatives of the workers' sections, after a series of preliminary Votes, 131 hands against 6 were .nally raised for the demonstration, with 22 abstaining.

The work of preparation was carried on up to the last moment secretly, in order not to permit the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks to start a counter-agitation. That legit-imate measure of caution was afterwards interpreted as evidence of a military conspiracy. The Central Council of Factory and Shop Committees joined in the decision to organise the demonstration. ”Upon the insistence of Trotsky and against the objection of Lunacharsky,” writes Yugov, ”the Committee of the Mezhrayontzi decided to join the demonstration.” Preparations were carried on with boiling energy.

The manifestation was to raise the banner of ”Power to the Soviets.” The .ghting slogan ran: ”Down with the Ten Minister-Capitalists” That was the simplest possible expression for a break-up of the coalition with the bourgeoisie. The pro cession was to march to the Cadet Corps where the congress was sitting. This was to emphasise that the question was not of overthrowing the government, but of bringing pressure on the Soviet leaders.

To be sure, other ideas were expressed at the preliminary conferences of the Bolsheviks. For instance, Smilga, then a young member of the Central Committee, proposed that they should not ”hesitate to seize the Post Of.ce, telegraph, and a.r.s.enal, if events developed to the point of a clash.” Another partic.i.p.ant in the conference, a member of the Petrograd Committee, Latsis, comments in his diary upon the rejection of Smilga's proposal: ”I can-not reconcile myself ... I arrange with comrades Semashko and Rakhia to be fully armed in case of necessity and seize the railroad terminals, a.r.s.enals, banks, post and telegraph of.ces, with the help of a machine-gun regiment.” Semashko was the of.cer of a machine-gun regiment. Rakhia, a worker, one of the militant Bolsheviks.

The existence of such moods is easily understandable. The whole course of the party was toward a seizure of power, and the question was merely of appraising the present situation. An obvious break in favour of the Bolsheviks was taking place in Petrograd, but in the provinces the same process was going slower. Moreover the front needed the lesson of an advance before it could shake off its distrust of the Bolsheviks. Lenin therefore stood .rm on his April position: ”Patiently explain.”

Sukhanov in his Notes describes the plan of the demonstration of June 10, as a direct device of Lenin for seizing the power ”if the situation proves favourable.” As a matter of fact, only individual Bolsheviks tried to put the matter this way, aiming according to the ironic expression of Lenin, ”just a wee bit too far to the left.” Strangely enough, Sukhanov does not even try to compare his arbitrary guesses with the political line of Lenin expressed in innumerable speeches and articles.[see Appendix 3 for more information on this]

The Bureau of the Executive Committee immediately presented the Bolsheviks with a demand to call off the demonstration. On what grounds? Only the state power, obviously, could formally forbid a demonstration; but the state power did not dare think of it. How could the Soviet, itself a ”private organisation,” led by a bloc composed of two political par-ties, pre vent a third party from demonstrating? The Bolshevik Central Committee refused to accede to the demand, but decided to emphasise more sharply the peaceful character of the demonstration. On the 9th of June, a Bolshevik proclamation was pasted up in the workers' districts. ”We are free citizens, we have the right to protest, and we ought to use this right before it is too late. The right to a peaceful demonstration is ours.”

The Compromisers carried the question before the congress. It was at that moment that Cheidze p.r.o.nounced his words about the fatal outcome, and that it would be necessary for the congress to sit all night. A member of the praesidium, Gegechkori, also one of the sons of the Gironde, concluded his speech with a rude cry in the direction of the Bolshe-viks: ”Take your dirty hands off a glorious cause' They did not give the Bolsheviks time, though it was demanded, to take up the question in a meeting of their faction. The congress pa.s.sed a resolution for bidding all demonstrations for three days. Besides being an act of violence with relation to the Bolsheviks, this was an act of usurpation with relation to the government. The soviets continued to steal the power from under their own pillow.

Miliukov was speaking at this time at a Cossack conference, and called the Bolsheviks ”the chief enemies of the Russian revolution.” Its chief friend, he allowed them to infer, was Miliukov himself, who just before February had agreed to accept defeat from the Germans rather than revolution from the Russian people. To a question from the Cossacks as to the att.i.tude towards Leninists, Miliukov answered: ”It's time to make an end of these people.” The leader of the bourgeoisie was in too great a hurry. However, he really could not afford to waste time.

Meanwhile meetings were being held in factories and regiments, adopting resolutions to go into the streets the next day with the slogan ”All Power to the Soviets.” Under the noise of the soviet and Cossack congresses, the fact pa.s.sed unnoticed that 37 Bolsheviks were elected to the duma of the Vyborg district, only 22 from the Social Revolutionary-Menshevik bloc, and 4 Kadets.

Confronted with the categorical resolution of the congress and moreover with a mys-terious reference to a threatening blow from the rightthe Bolsheviks decided to reconsider the question. They wanted a peaceful demonstration, not an insurrection, and they could not have any motive for converting a for bidden demonstration into a half-insurrection. On its side the presidium of the congress decided to take measures. Several hundred delegates were grouped in tens and sent out to the workers' districts and the barracks to prevent the demonstration. They were to meet in the morning at the Tauride Palace and compare notes. The executive committee of the peasant deputies joined in this expedition, appointing 70 from its members.h.i.+p.

Thus, in however unexpected a manner, the Bolsheviks achieved their goal. The del-egates of the congress found them selves obliged to get acquainted with the workers and soldiers of the capital. If the mountain was not allowed to come to the prophet, the prophet at least went to the mountain. The meeting proved instructive in the highest degree. In the Izvestia of the Moscow Soviet, a Menshevik correspondent paints the following pic-ture: ”All night long, without a wink of sleep, a majority of the congress, more than 500 members, dividing themselves into tens, travelled through the factories and shops and mil-itary units of Petrograd, urging everybody to stay away from the demonstration. . . . The congress had no authority in a good many of the factories and shops, and also in several regiments of the garrison. . . . The members were frequently met in a far from friendly manner, sometimes hostilely, and quite often they were sent away with insults.” This of-.cial Soviet organ does not exaggerate in the least. On the contrary, it gives a very much softened picture of this nocturnal meeting of two different worlds.

The Petrograd ma.s.ses at least left no doubt among the dele gates as to who was able henceforth to summon a demonstration, or to call it off. The workers of the Putilov factory agreed to paste up the declaration of the congress against the demonstration only after they learned from Pravda that it did not contradict the resolution of the Bolsheviks. The .rst ma-chine gun regimentwhich played the leading role in the garrison, as did the Putilov factory among the workersafter hearing the speeches of Cheidze and Avksentiev representing the two executive committees, adopted the following resolution: ”In agreement with the Cen-tral Committee of the Bolsheviks and their military organisation, the regiment postpones its action.”

This brigade of paci.ers arrived at the Tauride Palace after their sleepless night in a condition of complete demoralisation. They had a.s.sumed that the authority of the congress was in violable, but had run into a stone wall of distrust and hostility. ”The ma.s.ses are thick with Bolsheviks.” ”The att.i.tude to the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries is hostile.” ”They trust only Pravda.” ”In some places they shouted: 'We are not your comrades.'” One after another the delegates reported how, although they had called off the battle, they were defeated.

The ma.s.ses submitted to the decision of the Bolsheviks, but not without protest and indignation. In certain factories they adopted resolutions of censure of the Central Com-mittee. The more .ery members of the patty in the sections tore up their members.h.i.+p cards. That was a serious warning.

The Compromisers had motivated their three-day veto of demonstrations by references to a monarchist plot, which hoped to avail itself of the action of the Bolsheviks; they men-tioned the partic.i.p.ation in it of a part of the Cossack congress and the approach to Petrograd of counter-revolutionary troops.

It is not surprising if after calling off the demonstration the Bolsheviks demanded an explanation as to this conspiracy. In place of an answer the leaders of the congress accused the Bolsheviks themselves of a conspiracy. They found this happy way out of the situation.

It must be acknowledged that on the night of June 10 the Compromisers did discover a conspiracy, and one which shook them badlya conspiracy of the ma.s.ses with the Bolsheviks against the Compromisers. However, the submission of the Bolsheviks to the resolution of the congress encouraged them and permitted their panic to turn into madness. The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries decided to show aniron energy. On the 10th of June the Menshevik paper wrote: ”It is time to brand the Leninists as traitors and betrayers of the revolution.” A representative of the Executive Committee appeared at the Cossack congress and requested them to support the Soviet against the Bolsheviks. He was answered by the chairman, the ataman of the Urals, Dutov: ”We, Cossacks, will never go against the Soviet.” Against the Bolsheviks the reactionaries were ready to go hand in hand even with the Soviet-in order the better to strangle it later on.

On June 11 there a.s.sembles a formidable court of justice: the Executive Committee, members of the presidium of the congress, leaders of the actionsin all about a hundred men. Tseretelli as usual appears in the role of prosecutor. Choking with rage, he demands deadly measures, and scornfully waves away Dan, who is always ready to bait the Bolsheviks, but still not quite ready to destroy them. ”What the Bolsheviks are now doing is not ideological propaganda, but a conspiracy.

The Bolsheviks must excuse us. Now we are going to adopt different methods of strug-gle. .. . We have got to disarm the Bolsheviks. We cannot leave in their hands those two great technical instruments which they have possessed up to now. We cannot leave ma-chine guns and ri.es in their hands. We will not tolerate conspiracies.” That was a new note. What did it mean exactly to disarm the Bolsheviks? Sukhanov writes on this subject: ”The Bolsheviks really did not have any special stores of weapons. All the weapons were actually in the hands of soldiers and workers, the immense ma.s.s of whom were following the Bolsheviks. Disarming the Bolsheviks could mean only disarming the proletariat. More than that, it meant disarming the troops.”

In other words, that cla.s.sic moment of the revolution had arrived when the bourgeois democracy, upon the demand of the reaction, undertakes to disarm the workers who had guaranteed the revolutionary victory. These democratic gentlemen, among whom were well-read people, had invariably given their sympathy to the disarmed, not to the disarm-ersso long as it was a question of reading old books. But when this question presented itself in reality, they did not recognise it. The mere fact that Tseretelli, a revolutionist, a man who had spent years at hard labour, a Zimmerwaldist of yesterday, was undertaking to disarm the workers, had some dif.culty in making its way into people's heads. The hall was stunned into silence. The provincial delegates nevertheless felt that someone was pus.h.i.+ng them into an abyss. One of the of.cers went into hysterics.

No less pale than Tseretelli, Kamenev rose in his seat and cried out with a dignity the strength of which was felt by the audience: ”Mr. Minister, if you are not merely talking into the wind, you have no right to con.ne yourself to speech. Arrest me, and try me for conspiracy against the revolution.” The Bolsheviks left the hall with a protest, refusing to partic.i.p.ate in this mockery of their own party. The tenseness in the hall became almost unbearable. Lieber hastened to the aid of Tseretelli. Restrained rage was replaced by hysterical fury. Lieber called for ruthless measures. ”If you want to win the ma.s.ses who follow the Bolsheviks, then break with Bolshevism.” But he was heard without sympathy, even with a half-hostility.

Impressionable as always, Lunacharsky immediately tried to .nd a common ground with the majority: Although the Bolsheviks had a.s.sured him that they had in mind only a peaceful demonstration, nevertheless his own experience had convinced him that ”it was a mistake to organise a demonstration”; however, we must not sharpen the con.icts. Without pacifying his enemies, Lunacharsky irritated his friends.