The Power—The Duma—The Provisional Government—The High Command—The Soviet of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates.

Russia’s exceptional position, confronted on the one hand with a world war and on the other with a revolution, made the establishment of a strong power an imperative necessity.

The Duma, which, as I have already said, unquestionably enjoyed the confidence of the country, refused, after lengthy and heated discussions, to head the Revolutionary power. Temporarily dissolved by the Imperial ukaze of February 27th, it remained loyal, and “did not attempt to hold an official sitting,” as it “considered itself a legislative institution of the old rÉgime, co-ordinated by fundamental law with the obviously doomed remnants of autocracy.” (Miliukov, History of the Second Russian Revolution.) The subsequent decrees emanated from the “private conference of the members of the Duma.” This body elected the “temporary Committee of the Duma,” which exercised supreme power in the first days of the Revolution.

When power was transferred to the Provisional Government, the Duma and the Committee retired to the background, but did not cease to exist, and endeavoured to give moral support and a raison d’Être to the first three Cabinets of the Government. On May 2nd, during the first Government crisis, the Committee still struggled for the right to appoint members of the Government; subsequently it reduced its demands to that of the right to participate in the formation of the Government. Thus, on July 7th, the Committee of the Duma protested against its exclusion from the formation of a new Provisional Government by Kerensky, as it considered such a course as “legally inadmissible and politically disastrous.” The Duma, of course, was fully entitled to participate in the direction of the life of the country, as, even in the camp of its enemies, the signal service was recognised which the Duma had rendered to the Revolution “In converting to it the entire front and all the officers” (Stankevitch: Reminiscences). There can be no doubt that, had the Soviet taken the lead in the Revolution, there would have been a fierce struggle against it, and the Revolution would have been squashed. It might, perhaps, have then given the victory to the Liberal Democracy, and would have led the country to a normal evolutionary development. Who knows?

The members of the Duma themselves felt the strain of inactivity which was at first voluntary and later compulsory. There were many absentees, and the President of the Duma had to combat this attitude. Nevertheless, the Duma and the Committee were quite alive to the importance of the trend events were taking. They issued resolutions condemning, warning, and appealing to the common sense, the heart, and the patriotism of the people, of the Army, and of the Government. The Duma, however, had already been swept aside by the Revolutionary elements. Its statesmanlike appeals, full of the clear consciousness of impending perils, had ceased to impress the country, and were ignored by the Government. Even a Duma so peaceable that it did not even fight for power aroused the apprehensions of the Revolutionary Democracy, and the Soviets led a violent campaign for the abolition of the Council of the State and of the Duma. In August the Duma relaxed its efforts in issuing proclamations, and when Kerensky dissolved the Duma at the bidding of the Soviets, nineteen days before the expiration of its five years’ term, on October 6th, this news did not produce any appreciable effect in the country. Rodzianko kept alive for a long time the idea of the Fourth Duma or of the Assembly of all Dumas as the foundation of the power of the State. He stuck to this idea throughout the Kuban campaigns and the Ekaterinodar Volunteer period of the anti-Bolshevik struggle. But the Duma was dead....

None can tell whether the Duma’s abdication of power was inevitable in the days of March, and whether it was rendered imperative by the relative strength of the forces that struggled for power, whether the “class” Duma could have retained the Socialist elements in its midst and have continued to wield a certain influence in the country, acquired as a result of its fight against autocracy. It is at least certain that, in the years of trouble in Russia, when no normal, popular representation was possible, all Governments invariably felt the necessity for some substitute for this popular representation, were it only as a kind of tribune from which expression could be given to different currents of thought, a rock upon which to stand and to divine moral responsibilities. Such was the “Temporary Council of the Russian Republic” at Petrograd in October, 1917, which, however, had been started by the Revolutionary Democracy, as a counter-blast to the contemplated Bolshevik Second Congress of Soviets. Such was the partial constituent Assembly of 1917, which was held on the Volga in the summer of 1918, and such the proposed convocation of the High Council and Assembly (Sobor) of the Zemstvos in the South of Russia and in Siberia in 1919. Even the highest manifestation of collective dictatorship—“the Soviet of People’s Commissars”—which reached a level of despotism and had suppressed social life and all the live forces of the country to an extent unknown in history, and reduced the country to a graveyard, still considered it necessary to create a kind of theatrical travesty of such a representative institution by periodically convoking the “All-Russian Congress of Soviets.”

The authority of the Provisional Government contained the seed of its own impotence. As Miliukov has said, that power was devoid of the “symbol” to which the masses were accustomed. The Government yielded to the pressure of the Soviet, which was systematically distorting all State functions and making them subservient to the interests of class and party.

Kerensky, the “hostage of Democracy,” was in the Government. In a speech delivered in the Soviet he thus defined his rÔle: “I am the representative of Democracy, and the Provisional Government should look upon me as expressing the demands of Democracy, and should particularly heed the opinions which I may utter.” Last, but not least, there were in the Government representatives of the Russian Liberal Intelligencia, with all its good and bad qualities, and with the lack of will-power characteristic of that class, the will-power which, by its boundless daring, its cruelty in removing obstacles, and its tenacity in seizing power, gives victory in the struggle for self-preservation to class, caste and nationality. During the four years of the Russian turmoil the Russian Intelligencia and Bourgeoisie lived in a state of impotence and of non-resistance, and surrendered every stronghold; they even submitted to physical extermination and extinction. Strong will-power appeared to exist only on the two extreme flanks of the social front. Unfortunately it was a will to destroy and not to create. One flank has already produced Lenin, Bronstein, Apfelbaum, Uritzki, Dzerjinski, and Peters.... The other flank, defeated in March, 1917, may not yet have said its last word. The Russian Revolution was undoubtedly national in its origin, being a mode of expressing the universal protest against the old rÉgime. But, when the time came for reconstruction, two forces came into conflict which embodied and led two different currents of political thought, two different outlooks. According to the accepted phrase, it was a struggle between the Bourgeoisie and the Democracy. But it would be more correct to describe it as a struggle between the Bourgeois and the Socialist Democracies. Both sides derived their leading spirits from the same source—the Russian Intelligencia—by no means numerous and heterogeneous, not so much in respect of class and wealth as of political ideas and methods of political contest. Both sides inadequately reflected the thoughts of the popular masses in whose name they spoke. At first these masses were merely an audience applauding the actors who most appealed to its impassioned, but not altogether idealistic, instincts. It was only after this psychological training that the inert masses, and in particular the Army, became, in the words of Kerensky, “an elemental mass melted in the fire of the Revolution and ... exercising tremendous pressure which was felt by the entire organism of the State.” To deny this would be tantamount to the denial, in accordance with Tolstoi’s doctrine, of the influence of leaders upon the life of the people. This theory has been completely shattered by Bolshevism, which has conquered for a long time the masses of the people with whom it has nothing in common and who are inimical to the Communist creed.

In the first weeks of the new Government the phenomenon became apparent, which was described in the middle of July by the Committee of the Duma in its appeal to the Government in the following words: “The seizure of the power of the State by irresponsible organisations, the creation by these organisations of a dual power in the centre, and of the absence of power in the country.”

The power of the Soviet was also conditional in spite of a series of Government crises and of opportunities thereby provided for seizing that power and wielding it without opposition and unreservedly (the Provisional Government offered no resistance). The Revolutionary Democracy, as represented by the Soviet, categorically declined to assume that rÔle because it realised quite clearly that it lacked the strength, the knowledge, and the skill to govern the country in which it had as yet no real support. Tzeretelli, one of the leaders of Revolutionary Democracy, said: “The time is not yet ripe for the fulfilment of the ultimate aims of the proletariat and for the solution of class questions.... We understand that a Bourgeois Revolution is in progress ... as we are unable fully to attain to our bright ideal ... and we do not wish to assume that responsibility for the collapse of the movement, which we could not avoid if we made the desperate attempt to impose our will upon events at the present moment.” Another representative, Nahamkes, said that they preferred “to compel the Government to comply with their demands by means of perpetual organised pressure.” A member of the Executive Committee of the Soviet, Stankevitch, thus describes the Soviet in his Reminiscences, which reflect the incorrigible idealism of a Socialist who is off the rails and who has now reached the stage of excusing Bolshevism, but who nevertheless impresses one as being sincere: “The Soviet, a gathering of illiterate soldiers, took the lead because it asked nothing and because it was only a screen covering what was actually complete anarchy.” Two thousand soldiers from the rear and eight hundred workmen from Petrograd formed an institution which pretended to guide the political, military, economic and social life of an enormous country. The records of the meetings of the Soviet, as reported in the Press, testify to the extraordinary ignorance and confusion which reigned at these meetings. One could not help being painfully impressed by such a “representation” of Russia. An impotent and subdued anger against the Soviet was growing in the circles of the Intelligencia, the Democratic Bourgeoisie and the Officers. All their hatred was concentrated upon the Soviet, which they abused in terms of excessive bitterness. That hatred, often openly expressed, was wrongly interpreted by the Revolutionary Democracy as abhorrence of the very idea of Democratic Representation. In time the supremacy of the Petrograd Soviet, which ascribed to itself the exceptional merit of having destroyed the old rÉgime, began to wane. A vast network of Committees and Soviets, which had flooded the country and the Army, claimed the right to participate in the work of the State. In April, therefore, a Congress was held of the delegates of Workmen and Soldiers’ Soviets. The Petrograd Soviet was reorganised on the basis of a more regular representation, and in June the All-Russian Congress of Representatives of the Soviets was opened. The composition of this fuller representation of Democracy is interesting:—

Thus, the overwhelming masses of Non-Socialist Russia were not represented at all; even the elements that were either non-political or belonged to the groups of the right and were elected by the Soviets and Army Committees as non-party members, hastened for motives altogether in the interests of the State to profess the Socialistic creed. In these circumstances the Revolutionary Democracy could hardly be expected to exercise self-restraint, and there could be no hope of keeping the popular movement within the limits of the Bourgeois Revolution. In reality the ramshackle helm was seized by a block of Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, in which first the former and then the latter predominated. It is that narrow partisan block which held in bondage the will of the Government and is primarily responsible for the subsequent course of the Revolution.

The composition of the Soviet was heterogeneous: intellectuals, bourgeoisie, workmen, soldiers and many deserters. The Soviet and the Congresses, and especially the former, were a somewhat inert mass, utterly devoid of political education. Action, power and influence afterwards passed therefore into the hands of Executive Committees in which the Socialist intellectual elements were almost exclusively represented. The most devastating criticism of the Executive Committee of the Soviet came from that very institution, and was made by one of its members, Stankevitch: the meetings were chaotic, political disorganisation, indecision, haste, and fitfulness showed themselves in its decisions, and there was a complete absence of administrative experience and true democracy. One of the members advocated anarchy in the “Izvestia,” another sent written permits for the expropriation of the landlords, a third explained to a military delegation which had complained of the Commanding Officers that these officers should be dismissed and arrested, etc.

“The most striking feature of the Committee is the preponderance of the alien element,” wrote Stankevitch. “Jews, Georgians, Letts, Poles, and Lithuanians were represented out of[Pg 90]
[Pg 91] all proportion to their numbers in Petrograd and in the country.”

The following is a list of the first Presidium of the All-Russian Central Committee of the Soviets:—

• 1 Georgian
• 5 Jews
• 1 Armenian
• 1 Pole
• 1 Russian (if his name was not an assumed one).

This exceptional preponderance of the alien element, foreign to the Russian national idea, could not fail to tinge the entire activities of the Soviet with a spirit harmful to the interests of the Russian State. The Provisional Government was the captive of the Soviet from the very first day, as it had under-estimated the importance and the power of that institution, and was unable to display either determination or strength in resisting the Soviet. The Government did not even hope for victory in that struggle, as, in its endeavour to save the country, it could not very well proclaim watchwords which would have suited the licentious mob and which emanated from the Soviet. The Government talked about duty, the Soviet about rights. The former “prohibited,” the latter “permitted.” The Government was linked with the old power by the inheritance of statesmanship and organisation, as well as the external methods of administration; whereas the Soviet, springing from mutiny and from the slums, was the direct negation of the entire old rÉgime. It is a delusion to think, as a small portion of the moderate democracy still appear to do, that the Soviet played the part of “restraining the tidal wave of the people.” The Soviet did not actually destroy the Russian State, but was shattering it, and did so to the extent of smashing the Army and imposing Bolshevism on it. Hence the duplicity and insincerity of its activities. Apart from its declarations, all the speeches, conversations, comments, and articles of the Soviet and of the Executive Committee, of its groups and individuals, came to the knowledge of the country and of the Front, and tended towards the destruction of the authority of the Government. Stankevitch wrote that not deliberately, but persistently, the Committee was dealing death-blows to the Government.

Who, then, were the men who were trying to democratise the Army Regulations, smashing all the foundations of the Army, inspiring the Polivanov Commission, and tying the hands of two War Ministers? The following is the personnel elected in the beginning of April from the Soldiers’ Section of the Soviet to the Executive Committee:—

I will leave their description to Stankevitch, who said: “At first hysterical, noisy, and unbalanced men were elected, who were utterly useless to the Committee....” New elements were subsequently added. “The latter tried consciously, and in the measure of their ability, to cope with the ocean of military matters. Two of them, however, seemed to have been inoffensive scribes in Reserve Battalions, who had never taken the slightest interest in the War, the Army, or the political Revolution.” The duplicity and the insincerity of the Soviet were clearly manifested in regard to the War. The intellectual circles of the Left and of the Revolutionary Democracy mostly espoused the idea of Zimmerwald and of Internationalism. It was natural, therefore, that the first word which the Soviet addressed on March 14, 1917, “To the Peoples of the Whole World,” was:

“PEACE.”

The world problems, infinitely complex, owing to the national, political, and economic interests of the peoples who differed in their understanding of the Eternal Truth, could not be solved in such an elementary fashion. Bethmann-Holweg was contemptuously silent. On March 17th, 1917, the Reichstag, by a majority against the votes of both Social Democratic parties, declined the offer of peace without annexations. Noske voiced the views of the German Democracy in saying: “We are offered from abroad to organise a Revolution. If we follow that advice the working classes will come to grief.” Among the Allies and the Allied Democracies the Soviet manifesto provoked anxiety, bewilderment, and discontent, which were vividly expressed in the speeches made by Albert Thomas, Henderson, Vandervelde, and even the present-day French Bolshevik, Cachin, upon their visits to Russia. The Soviet subsequently added to the word “Peace” the definition, “Without annexations and indemnities on the basis of the self-determination of peoples.” The theory of this formula promptly clashed with the actual question of Western and Southern Russia occupied by the Germans; of Poland, of Roumania, Belgium, and Serbia, devastated by the Germans; of Alsace-Lorraine and Posen, as well as of the servitude, expropriations, and compulsory labour which had been imposed upon all the countries invaded by the Germans. According to the programme of the German Social Democrats, which was at length published in Stockholm, the French in Alsace-Lorraine, the Poles in Posen, and the Danes in Schleswig were only to be granted national autonomy under the sceptre of the German Emperor. At the same time, the idea of the independence of Finland, Russian Poland, and Ireland was strongly advocated. The demand for the restoration of the German colonies was curiously blended with the promises of independence for India, Siam, Korea.

The sun did not rise at the bidding of Chanticleer. The ballon d’essai failed. The Soviet was forced to admit that “time is necessary in order that the peoples of all countries should rise, and with an iron hand compel their rulers and capitalists to make peace.... Meanwhile, the comrade-soldiers who have sworn to defend Russian liberties should not refuse to advance, as this may become a military necessity....” The Revolutionary Democracy was perplexed, and their attitude was clearly expressed in the words of Tchkeidze: “We have been preaching against the War all the time. How can I appeal to the soldiers to continue the War and to stay at the Front?”

Be that as it may, the words “War” and “Advance” had been uttered. They divided the Soviet Socialists into two camps, the “Defeatists” and “Defensists.”[17] Theoretically, only the right groups of the Social Revolutionaries, the popular Socialists, the “Unity” (“Edistvo”) group, and the Labour party (“Trudoviki”) belonged to the latter. All other Socialists advocated the immediate cessation of the war and the “deepening” of the Revolution by means of internal Class War. In practice, when the question of the continuation of the war was put to the vote, the Defensists were joined by the majority of the Social Revolutionaries and of the Social Democrat Mensheviks. The resolutions, however, bore the stamp of ambiguity—neither war nor peace. Tzeretelli was advocating “a movement against the war in all countries, Allied and enemy.” The Congress of the Soviets at the end of May passed an equally ambiguous resolution, which, after demanding that annexations and indemnities should be renounced by all belligerents, pointed out that, “so long as the war lasts, the collapse of the Army, the weakening of its spirit, strength and capacity for active operations would constitute a strong menace to the cause of Freedom and to the vital interests of the country.” In the beginning of June the Second Congress passed a new resolution. On the one hand, it emphatically declared that “the question of the advance should be decided solely from the point of view of purely military and strategical considerations”; on the other hand, it expressed an obviously Defeatist idea: “Should the war end by the complete defeat of one of the belligerent groups, this would be a source of new wars, would increase the enmity between peoples, and would result in their complete exhaustion, in starvation and doom.” The Revolutionary Democracy had obviously confused two ideas: the strategic victory signifying the end of the war and the terms of the Peace Treaty, which might be humane or inhuman, righteous or unjust, far-seeing or short-sighted. In fact, what they wanted was war and an advance, but without a victory. Curiously enough, the Prussian Deputy, Strebel, the editor of Vorwaerts, invented the same formula as early as in 1915. He wrote: “I openly profess that a complete victory of the Empire would not benefit the Social Democracy.”

There was not a single branch of administration with which the Soviet and the Executive Committee did not interfere with the same ambiguity and insincerity, due on the one hand to the fear of any action contrary to the fundamentals of their doctrine, and on the other to the obvious impossibility of putting these doctrines into practice. The Soviet did not, and could not, partake in the creative work of rebuilding the State. With regard to Economics, Agriculture, and Labour, the activities of the Soviet were reduced to the publication of pompous Socialist Party programmes, which the Socialist Ministers themselves clearly understood to be impracticable in the atmosphere of War, Anarchy, and Economic crisis prevailing in Russia. Nevertheless, these Resolutions and Proclamations were interpreted in the factories and in the villages as a kind of “Absolution.” They roused the passions and provoked the desire, immediately and arbitrarily, to put them into practice. This provocation was followed by restraining appeals. In an appeal addressed to the sailors of Kronstadt on May 26th, 1917, the Soviet suggested “that they should demand immediate and implicit compliance with all the orders of the Provisional Government given in the interests of the Revolution and of the security of the country....”

All these literary achievements are not, however, the only form of activity in which the Soviet indulged. The characteristic feature of the Soviet and of the Executive Committee was the complete absence of discipline in their midst. With reference to the special Delegation of the Committee, whose object it was to be in contact with the Provisional Government, Stankevitch says: “What could that Delegation do? While it was arguing and reaching a complete agreement with the Ministers, dozens of members of the Committee were sending letters and publishing articles; travelling in the provinces, and at the Front in the name of the Committee; receiving callers at the Taurida Palace, everyone of them acting independently and taking no heed of instructions, Resolutions, or decisions of the Committee.”

Was the Central Committee of the Soviet invested with actual power? A reply to this question can be found in the appeal of the Organising Committee of the Labour Socialist Democratic Party of July 17th. “The watchword ‘All-Power to the Soviets,’ to which many workmen adhere, is a dangerous one. The following of the Soviets represents a minority in the population, and we must make every effort in order that the Bourgeois elements, who are still willing and capable of joining us in preserving the conquests of the Revolution, shall share with us the burdens of the inheritance left by the old rÉgime, which we have shouldered, and the enormous responsibility for the outcome of the Revolution which we bear in the eyes of the people.” The Soviet, and later the All-Russian Central Committee, could not, and would not, by reason of its composition and their political ideas, exercise a powerful restraining influence upon the masses of the people, who had thrown off the shackles and were perturbed and mutinous. The movement had been inspired by the members of the Soviet, and the influence and authority of the Soviet were, therefore, entirely dependent on the extent to which they were able to flatter the instincts of the masses. These masses, as Karl Kautsky, an observer from the Marxist Camp, has said, “were concerned merely with their requirements and their desires as soon as they were drawn into the Revolution, and they did not care a straw whether their demands were practicable or beneficial to society.” Had the Soviet endeavoured to resist with any firmness or determination whatsoever the pressure of the masses, it would have run the risk of being swept away. Also, day after day and step by step, the Soviet was coming under the influence of Anarchist and Bolshevik ideas.