Bolshevism Part 2

(6) Normal wages.

Those are, Sire, the princ.i.p.al wants with which we have come to you. Let your decree be known, swear that you will satisfy them, and you will make Russia happy and glorious, and your name will be branded in our hearts and in the hearts of our posterity for ever and ever. If, however, you will not reply to our prayer, we shall die here, on the place before your palace. We have no other refuge and no other means. We have two roads before us, one to freedom and happiness, the other to the grave. Tell us, Sire, which, and we will follow obediently, and if it be the road of death, let our lives be a sacrifice for suffering-wearied Russia. We do not regret the sacrifice; we bring it willingly.

Led on by the strange, hypnotic power of the mystical Father Gapon, who was clad in the robes of his office, tens of thousands of working-people marched that day to the Winter Palace, confident that the Czar would see them, receive their pet.i.tions, and harken to their prayers. It was not a revolutionary demonstration in the accepted sense of that term; the marchers did not carry red flags nor sing Socialist songs of revolt.

Instead, they bore pictures of the Czar and other members of the royal family and sang "G.o.d Save the Czar" and other well-known religious hymns.

No attempt was made to prevent the procession from reaching the square in front of the Winter Palace. Suddenly, without a word of warning, troops appeared from the courtyards, where they were hidden, and fired into the crowded ma.s.s of human beings, killing more than five hundred and wounding nearly three thousand. All who were able to do so turned and fled, among them Father Gapon.

b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday, as the day is known in Russian annals, is generally regarded as the beginning of the First Revolution. Immediately people began to talk of armed resistance. On the evening of the day of the tragedy there was a meeting of more than seven hundred Intellectuals at which the means for carrying on revolution was the topic discussed. This was the first of many similar gatherings which took place all over Russia. Soon the Intellectuals began to organize unions, ostensibly for the protection of their professional interests, but in reality for political purposes. There were unions of doctors, writers, lawyers, engineers, professors, editors, and so on. Quietly, and almost without design, there was being effected another and more important union, namely, the union of all cla.s.ses against autocracy and despotism.

The Czar gave from his private purse fifty thousand rubles for the relief of the families of the victims of b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday. On the 19th of January he received a deputation of carefully selected "loyal" working-men and delivered to them a characteristic homily, which infuriated the ma.s.ses by its stupid perversion of the facts connected with the wanton ma.s.sacre of b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday. Then, at the end of the month, he proclaimed the appointment of a commission to "investigate the causes of labor unrest in St.

Petersburg and its suburbs and to find means of avoiding them in the future." This commission was to consist of representatives of capital and labor. The working-men thereupon made the following demands:

(1) That labor be given an equal number of members in the commission with capital;

(2) That the working-men be permitted to freely elect their own representatives;

(3) That the sessions of the commission be open to the public;

(4) That there be complete freedom of speech for the representatives of labor in the commission;

(5) That all the working-people arrested on January 9th be released.

These demands of the working-men's organizations were rejected by the government, whereupon the workers agreed to boycott the commission and refuse to have anything to do with it. At last it became evident to the government that, in the circ.u.mstances, the commission could not accomplish any good, and it was therefore abandoned. The Czar and his advisers were desperate and vacillating. One day they would adopt a conciliatory att.i.tude toward the workers, and the next day follow it up with fresh measures of repression and punishment.

Little heeding the stupid charge by the Holy Synod that the revolutionary leaders were in the pay of the j.a.panese, the workers went on organizing and striking. All over Russia there were strikes, the movement had spread far beyond the bounds of St. Petersburg. General strikes took place in many of the large cities, such as Riga, Vilna, Libau, Warsaw, Lodz, Batum, Minsk, Tiflis, and many others. Conflicts between strikers and soldiers and police were common. Russia was aflame with revolution. The movement spread to the peasants in a most surprising manner. Numerous extensive and serious revolts of peasants occurred in different parts of Russia, the peasants looting the mansions of the landowners, and indulging in savage outbreaks of rioting.

While this was going on the army was being completely demoralized. The terrible defeat of the Russian forces by the j.a.panese--the foe that had been so lightly regarded--at Mukden was a crushing blow which greatly impaired the morale of the troops, both those at home and those at the front. Disaster followed upon disaster. May saw the destruction of the great Russian fleet. In June rebellion broke out in the navy, and the crew of the battle-ship _Potyamkin_, which was on the Black Sea, mutinied and hoisted the red flag. After making prisoners of their officers, the sailors hastened to lend armed a.s.sistance to striking working-men at Odessa who were in conflict with soldiers and police.

VII

It was a time of turbulent unrest and apparent utter confusion. It was not easy to discern the underlying significance and purpose of some of the most important events. On every hand there were strikes and uprisings, many of them without any sort of leadership or plan. Strikes which began over questions of wages and hours became political demonstrations in favor of a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. On the other hand, political demonstrations became transformed, without any conscious effort on the part of anybody, into strikes for immediate economic betterment. There was an intense cla.s.s conflict going on in Russia, as the large number of strikes for increased wages and shorter hours proved, yet the larger political struggle dwarfed and obscured the cla.s.s struggle. For the awakened proletariat of the cities the struggle in which they were engaged was economic as well as political. They wisely regarded the political struggle as part of the cla.s.s struggle, as Plechanov and his friends declared it to be. Yet the fact remained that the capitalist cla.s.s against which the proletariat was fighting on the economic field was, for the most part, fighting against autocracy, for the overthrow of Czarism and the establishment of political democracy, as earnestly, if less violently, than the proletariat was. The reason for this was the recognition by the leading capitalists of Russia of the fact that industrial progress was r.e.t.a.r.ded by the old regime, and that capitalist development requires popular education, a relatively high standard of living, political freedom, and stability and order in government. It was perfectly natural, therefore, for the great a.s.sociations of manufacturers and merchants to unite in urging the government to grant extensive political reforms so long as the cla.s.s conflict was merely incidental.

What had begun mainly as a cla.s.s war had become the war of all cla.s.ses against autocracy. Of course, in such a merging of cla.s.ses there necessarily appeared many shadings and degrees of interest. Not all the social groups and cla.s.ses were as radical in their demands as the organized peasants and city workers, who were the soul of the revolutionary movement.

There were, broadly speaking, two great divisions of social life with which the Revolution was concerned--the political and the economic. With regard to the first there was practical unanimity; he would be a blind slave to theoretical formulae who sought to maintain the thesis that cla.s.s interests divided ma.s.ses and cla.s.ses here. All cla.s.ses, with the exception of the bureaucracy, wanted the abolition of Czarism and Absolutism and the establishment of a const.i.tutional government, elected by the people on a basis of universal suffrage, and directly responsible to the electorate.

Upon the economic issue there was less agreement, though all parties and cla.s.ses recognized the need of extensive change. It was universally recognized that some solution of the land question must be found. There can never be social peace or political stability in Russia until that problem is settled. Now, it was easy for the Socialist groups, on the one hand, and the moderate groups, upon the other, to unite in demanding that the large estates be divided among the peasants. But while the Socialist groups--those of the peasants as well as those of city workers--demanded that the land be taken without compensation, the bourgeois elements, especially the leaders of the zemstvos, insisted that the state should pay compensation for the land taken. Judgment upon this vital question has long been embittered by the experience of the peasants with the "redemption payments" which were established when serfdom was abolished. During the period of greatest intensity, the summer of 1905, a federation of the various revolutionary peasants' organizations was formed and based its policy upon the middle ground of favoring the payment of compensation _in some cases_.

All through this trying period the Czar and his advisers were temporizing and attempting to obtain peace by means of petty concessions. A greater degree of religious liberty was granted, and a new representative body, the Imperial Duma, was provided for. This body was not to be a parliament in any real sense, but a debating society. It could _discuss_ proposed legislation, but it had no powers to _enact_ legislation of any kind.

Absolutism was dying hard, clinging to its powers with remarkable tenacity.

Of course, the concessions did not satisfy the revolutionists, not even the most moderate sections, and the net result was to intensify rather than to diminish the flame.

On the 2d of August--10th, according to the old Russian calendar--the war with j.a.pan came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth.

Russia had experienced humiliating and disastrous defeat at the hands of a nation far inferior in population and wealth, but infinitely superior in military capacity and morale. The news of the conditions of peace intensified the ardor and determination of the revolting Russian people and, on the other hand, added to the already great weakness of the government. September witnessed a great revival of revolutionary agitation, and by the end of the month a fresh epidemic of strikes had broken out in various parts of the country. By the middle of October the whole life of Russia, civil, industrial, and commercial, was a chaos. In some of the cities the greater part of the population had placed themselves in a state of siege, under revolutionary leadership.

On the 17th of October--Russian style--the Czar issued the famous Manifesto which acknowledged the victory of the people and the death of Absolutism.

After the usual amount of pietistic verbiage by way of introduction the Manifesto said:

We make it the duty of the government to execute our firm will:

(1) To grant the people the unshakable foundations of civic freedom on the basis of real personal inviolability, freedom of conscience, of speech, of a.s.semblage of unions.

(2) To admit now to partic.i.p.ation in the Imperial Duma, without stopping the pending elections and in so far as it is feasible in the short time remaining before the convening of the Duma, all the cla.s.ses of the population, _leaving the farther development of the principle of universal suffrage to the new legislative order._

(3) _To establish as an unshakable rule that no law can become binding without the consent of the Imperial Duma, and that the representatives of the people must be guaranteed a real partic.i.p.ation in the control over the lawfulness of the authorities appointed by us_.

We call upon all faithful sons of Russia to remember their duty to their fatherland, to aid in putting an end to the unprecedented disturbances, and to exert with us all their power to restore quiet and peace in our native land.

VIII

The Czar's Manifesto rang through the civilized world. In all lands it was hailed as the end of despotism and the triumph of democracy and freedom.

The joy of the Russian people was unbounded. At last, after fourscore years of heroic struggle and sacrifice by countless heroes, named and nameless, the goal of freedom was attained. Men, women, and children sang in the streets to express their joy. Red flags were displayed everywhere and solemnly saluted by the officers and men of the Czar's army. But the rejoicing was premature, as the events of a few hours clearly proved. With that fatal vacillation which characterized his whole life, Nicholas II had no sooner issued his Manifesto than he surrendered once more to the evil forces by which he was surrounded and harked back to the old ways. The day following the issuance of the Manifesto, while the people were still rejoicing, there began a series of terrible pogroms. The cry went forth, "Kill the Intellectuals and the Jews!"

There had been organized in support of the government, and by its agents, bodies of so-called "patriots." These were, in the main, recruited from the underworld, a very large number of them being criminals who were released from the prison for the purpose. Officially known as the a.s.sociation of the Russian People and the a.s.sociation to Combat the Revolution, these organizations were popularly nicknamed the Black Hundreds. Most of the members were paid directly by the government for their services, while others were rewarded with petty official positions. The Czar himself accepted membership in these infamous organizations of hired a.s.sa.s.sins.

Within three weeks after the issuance of the Manifesto more than a hundred organized pogroms took place, the number of killed amounting to nearly four thousand; the wounded to more than ten thousand, according to the most competent authorities. In Odessa alone more than one thousand persons were killed and many thousands wounded in a four-days' ma.s.sacre. In all the b.l.o.o.d.y pages of the history of the Romanovs there is nothing comparable to the frightful terror of this period.

Naturally, this brutal vengeance and the deception which Nicholas II and his advisers had practised upon the people had the immediate effect of increasing the relative strength and prestige of the Socialists in the revolutionary movement as against the less radical elements. To meet such brutality and force only the most extreme measures were deemed adequate.

The Council of Workmen's Deputies, which had been organized by the proletariat of St. Petersburg a few days before the Czar issued his Manifesto, now became a great power, the central guiding power of the Revolution. Similar bodies were organized in other great cities. The example set by the city workers was followed by the peasants in many places and Councils of Peasants' Deputies were organized. In a few cases large numbers of soldiers, making common cause with these bodies representing the working cla.s.s, formed Councils of Soldiers' Deputies. Here, then, was a new phenomenon; betrayed by the state, weary of the struggle to democratize and liberalize the political state, the workers had established a sort of revolutionary self-government of a new kind, entirely independent of the state. We shall never comprehend the later developments in Russia, especially the phenomenon of Bolshevism, unless we have a sympathetic understanding of these Soviets--autonomous, non-political units of working-cla.s.s self-government, composed of delegates elected directly by the workers.

As the revolutionary resistance to the Black Hundreds increased, and the rapidly growing Soviets of workmen's, peasants' and soldiers' delegates a.s.serted a constantly increasing indifference to the existing political state, the government again tried to stem the tide by making concessions.

On November 3d--new style--in a vain attempt to appease the incessant demand for the release of the thousands of political prisoners, and to put an end to the forcible release of such prisoners by infuriated mobs, a partial amnesty was declared. On the 16th a sop was thrown to the peasants in the shape of a decree abolishing all the remaining land-redemption payments. Had this reform come sooner it might have had the effect of stemming the tide of revolt among the peasants, but in the circ.u.mstances it was of no avail. Early in December the press censorship was abolished by decree, but that was of very little importance, for the radical press had thrown off all its restraints, simply ignoring the censorship. The government of Nicholas II was quite as helpless as it was tyrannical, corrupt, and inefficient. The army and navy, demoralized by the defeat suffered at the hands of j.a.pan, and especially by knowledge of the corruption in high places which made that defeat inevitable, were no longer dependable. Tens of thousands of soldiers and marines had joined with the workmen in the cities in open rebellion. Many more indulged themselves in purposeless rioting.

The organization of the various councils of delegates representing factory-workers and peasants, inevitable as it seemed to be, had one disastrous effect, the seriousness of which cannot be overstated. As we have seen, the cruel, blundering policy of the government had united all cla.s.ses against it in a revolutionary movement of unexampled magnitude.

Given the conditions prevailing in Russia, and especially the lack of industrial development and the corresponding numerical weakness of the industrial proletariat, it was evident that the only chance of success in the Revolution lay in the united effort of all cla.s.ses against the old regime. Nothing could have better served the autocracy, and therefore injured the revolutionary cause, than the creation of a division in the ranks of the revolutionists.

This was exactly what the separate organizations of the working cla.s.s accomplished. All the provocative agents of the Czar could not have contrived anything so serviceable to the reaction. _Divide et impera_ has been the guiding principle of cunning despots in all ages, and the astutest advisers of Nicholas II must have grinned with Satanic glee when they realized how seriously the forces they were contending against were dividing. Stupid oppression had driven into one united force the wage-earning and wage-paying cla.s.ses. Working-men and manufacturers made common cause against that stupid oppression. Now, however, as the inevitable result of the organization of the Soviets, and the predominance of these in the Revolution, purely economic issues came to the front. In proportion as the cla.s.s struggle between employers and employed was accentuated the common struggle against autocracy was minimized and obscured. Numerous strikes for increased wages occurred, forcing the employers to organize resistance. Workers in one city--St. Petersburg, for example--demanded the immediate introduction of an eight-hour workday, and proclaimed it to be in force, quite regardless of the fact that longer hours prevailed elsewhere and that, given the compet.i.tive system, their employers were bound to resist a demand that would be a handicap favoring their compet.i.tors.

As might have been foreseen, the employers were forced to rely upon the government, the very government they had denounced and conspired to overthrow. The president of the Council of Workmen's Deputies of St.

Petersburg, Chrustalev-Nosar, in his _History of the Council of Workmen's Deputies_, quotes the order adopted by acclamation on November 11th--new style--introducing, from November 13th, an eight-hour workday in all shops and factories "in a revolutionary way." By way of commentary, he quotes a further order, adopted November 25, repealing the former order and declaring:

The government, headed by Count Witte, _in its endeavor to break the vigor of the revolutionary proletariat, came to the support of capital_, thus turning the question of an eight-hour workday in St. Petersburg into a national problem. The consequence has been that the working-men of St. Petersburg are unable now, apart from the working-men of the entire country, to realize the decree of the Council. The Council of Workmen's Deputies, therefore, deems it necessary to _stop temporarily the immediate and general establishment of an eight-hour workday by force_.

The Councils inaugurated general strike after general strike. At first these strikes were successful from a revolutionary point of view. Soon, however, it became apparent that the general strike is a weapon which can only be used effectively on rare occasions. It is impossible to rekindle frequently and at will the sacrificial pa.s.sion necessary to make a successful general strike. This the leaders of the proletariat of Russia overlooked. They overlooked, also, the fact that the ma.s.ses of the workers were exhausted by the long series of strikes in which they had engaged and were on the verge of starvation. The consequence was that most of the later strikes failed to accomplish anything like the ends sought.

Naturally, the government was recovering its confidence and its courage in proportion to the cla.s.s divisions and antagonisms of the opposition. It once more suppressed the revolutionary press and prohibited meetings. Once more it proclaimed martial law in many cities. With all its old-time a.s.surance it caused the arrest of the leaders of the unions of workmen and peasants, broke up the organizations and imprisoned their officers. It issued a decree which made it a crime to partic.i.p.ate in strikes. With the full sanction of the government, as was shown by the publication of doc.u.mentary evidence of unquestioned authenticity, the Black Hundreds renewed their brutality. The strong Council of Workmen's Deputies of St.

Petersburg, with which Witte had dealt as though it were part of the government itself, was broken up and suppressed. Witte wanted const.i.tutional government on the basis of the October Manifesto, but he wanted the orderly development of Russian capitalism. In this att.i.tude he was supported, of course, by the capitalist organizations. The very men who in the summer of 1905 had demanded that the government grant the demands of the workers and so end the strikes, and who worked in unison with the workers to secure the much-desired political freedom, six months later were demanding that the government suppress the strikes and exert its force to end disorder.

Recognition of these facts need not imply any lack of sympathy with the proletariat in their demands. The cla.s.s struggle in modern industrial society is a fact, and there is abundant justification--the justification of necessity and of achievement--for aggressive cla.s.s consciousness and cla.s.s warfare. But it is quite obvious that there are times when cla.s.s interests and cla.s.s warfare must be set aside in favor of larger social interests. It is obviously dangerous and reactionary--and therefore wrong--to insist upon strikes or other forms of cla.s.s warfare in moments of great calamity, as, for example, during disasters like the Johnstown flood and the Messina earthquake, or amid the ravages of a pestilential plague.

Marx, to whom we owe the formulation of the theory of cla.s.s struggle which has guided the Socialist movement, would never have questioned this important truth; he would never have supported cla.s.s separatism under conditions such as those prevailing in Russia at the end of 1905. Only doctrinaires, slaves to formulae, but blind to reality, could have sanctioned such separatism. But doctrinaires always abound in times of revolution.

By December the government was stronger than it had been at any time since the Revolution began. The zemstvos were no longer an active part of the revolutionary movement. Indeed, there had come over these bodies a great change, and most of them were now dominated by relatively reactionary landowners who, hitherto apathetic and indifferent, had been stirred to defensive action by the aggressive cla.s.s warfare of the workers.

Practically all the bourgeois moderates had been driven to the more or less open support of the government. December witnessed a new outburst in St.

Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities. Barricades were raised in the streets in many places. In Moscow, where the most bitter and sanguinary struggles took place, more than a thousand persons were killed. The government was better prepared than the workers; the army had recovered no little of its lost morale and did not refuse to shoot down the workers as it had done on previous occasions. The strikes and insurrections were put down in b.l.o.o.d.y vengeance and there followed a reign of brutal repression indescribably horrible and savage. By way of protest and retaliation, there were individual acts of terrorism, such as the execution of the Governor of Tambov by Marie Spiridonova, but these were of little or no avail. The First Revolution was drowned in blood and tears.