History of the Russian Revolution Vol 1 Part 7

The bourgeoisie left the task of settling things with the workers to the socialists. Re-ferring to the fact that the victory already won "has suf.ciently guaranteed the position of the working cla.s.s in its revolutionary struggle"-to be sure, have not the liberal landlords come into power?-the Executive Committee designated March 5 as the date for resuming work in the Petrograd district. Workers to the shops! Such is the iron-clad egotism of the educated cla.s.ses, liberals and socialists alike. Those people believed that millions of workers and soldiers lifted to the heights of insurrection by the inconquerable pressure of discontent and hope, would after their victory tamely submit to the old conditions of life. From reading historical works, they had got the impression that it happened this way in previous revolutions. But no, even in the past it has never been so. If the workers have been driven back into their former stalls, it has been only in a roundabout way, after a whole series of defeats and deceptions. Marat was keenly aware of this cruel social perversion of political revolutions. For that reason he is so well slandered by the of.cial historians. "A revolution is accomplished and sustained only by the lowest cla.s.ses of society," he wrote a month before the revolution of August 10, 1792, "by all the disinherited, whom the shame-less rich treat as canaille, and whom the Romans with their usual cynicism once named proletarians." And what will the revolution give to the disinherited? "Winning a certain success at the beginning, the movement is .nally conquered; it always lacks knowledge, skill, means, weapons, leaders and a de.nite plan of action; it remains defenceless in the face of conspirators possessed of experience, adroitness and craft." Is it any wonder that Kerensky did not want to be the Marat of the Russian revolution?

One of the former captains of Russian industry, V. Auerbach, relates with indignation how "the revolution was understood by the lower orders as something in the nature of an Easter carnival: servants, for example, disappeared for whole days, promenaded in red rib-bons, took rides in automobiles, came home in the morning only long enough to wash up and again went out for fun." It is remarkable that in trying to demonstrate the demoralising effect of a revolution, this accuser describes the conduct of a servant in exactly those terms which-with the exception, to be sure, of the red ribbon-most perfectly reproduce the daily life of the bourgeois lady-patrician. Yes, a revolution is interpreted by the oppressed as a holiday-or the eve of a holiday-and the .rst impulse of the drudge aroused by it is to loosen the yoke of the day-by-day humiliating, anguishing, ineluctable slavery. The working-cla.s.s as a whole could not, and did not intend to, comfort themselves with mere red ribbons as a symbol of victory-a victory won for others. There was agitation in the factories of Pet-rograd. A considerable number of shops openly refused to submit to the resolution of the Soviet. The workers were of course ready to return to the shops, for that was necessary-but upon what terms? They demanded the eight-hour day. The Mensheviks answered by allud-ing to 1905 when the workers tried to introduce the eight-hour day by forcible methods and were defeated. "A struggle on two fronts-against the reaction and against the capitalist-is too much for the proletariat." That was the central idea of the Mensheviks. They recog-nised in a general way the inevitability of a break in the future with the bourgeoisie. But this purely theoretical recognition did not bind them to anything. They considered that it was wrong to force the break. And since the bourgeoisie is driven into alliance with the reaction not by heated phrases from orators and journalists, but by the independent activity of the toiling cla.s.ses, the Mensheviks tried with all their power to oppose this activity-to oppose the economic struggle of the workers and peasants. "For the working cla.s.s," they taught, "social questions are not now of the .rst importance. Its present task is to achieve political freedom." But just what this speculative freedom consisted of, the workers could not understand. They wanted in the .rst place a little freedom for their muscles and nerves. And so they brought pressure on their bosses. By the irony of fate it was exactly on the 10th of March, when the Mensheviks were explaining that the eight-hour day is not a current issue that the Manufacturers' a.s.sociation-which had already been obliged to enter into of-.cial relations with the Soviet announced its readiness to introduce the eight-hour day and permit the organisation of factory and shop committees. The industrialists were more far-seeing than the democratic strategists of the Soviet. And no wonder: these employers came face to face with the workers, and the workers in no less than half of the Petrograd plants among them a majority of the biggest ones were already leaving the shops in a body after eight hours of work. They themselves took what the soviet and the government refused them. When the liberal press unctuously compared this gesture of the Russian industrial-ists of March 10, 1917 with that of the French n.o.bility of August 4, 1789, they were far nearer the historic truth than they themselves imagined : like the feudalists of the end of the eighteenth century, the Russian capitalists acted under the club of necessity, hoping by this temporary concession to make sure of getting back in the future what they had lost. One of the Kadet publicists, breaking through the of.cial lie, frankly acknowledged this: "Unfor-tunately for the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks had already by means of terror compelled the Manufacturers' a.s.sociation to agree to an immediate introduction of the eight-hour day." In what this terror consisted we already know. Worker-Bolsheviks indubitably occupied the front ranks in the movement, and here as in the decisive days of February an overwhelming majority of the workers followed them.

The Soviet, led by Mensheviks, recorded with mixed feelings this gigantic victory gained essentially against its opposition. The disgraced leaders were compelled, however, to make a still further step forward; they had to propose to the Provisional Government the promulgation in advance of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly of an eight-hour law for all Rus-sia. The government, however, in agreement with the manufacturers, resisted. Hoping for better days, they refused to ful.l this demand-presented to them, to be sure, without any particular insistence.

In the Moscow region the same struggle arose, but it lasted longer. Here too the soviet in spite of the resistance of the workers demanded a return to work. In one of the biggest factories a resolution against calling off the strike received 7,000 votes against 0. Other fac-tories reacted in much the same way. On the 10th of March the soviet again proclaimed the duty of returning immediately to the shops. Although work began after that in a majority of shops, there developed almost everywhere a struggle for the shortening of the working day. The workers corrected their leaders by direct action. After a long resistance the Moscow Soviet was obliged on the 21st of March to introduce the eight-hour day by its own act. The industrialists immediately submitted. In the provinces the same struggle was carried over into April. Almost everywhere the soviets at .rst refrained and resisted, and after-wards under pressure from the workers entered into negotiations with the manufacturers. And where the latter did not accede, the soviets were obliged independently to decree the eight-hour day. What a breach in the system!

The government stood aside on purpose. In those days, a furious campaign was opening under liberal leadership against the workers. In order to subdue them it was decided to turn the soldiers against them. To shorten the working day means, you see, to weaken the front. How can anybody think only of himself in war time? Are they counting the hours in the trenches?When the possessing cla.s.ses make a start on the road of demagogism, they stop at nothing. The agitation a.s.sumed a frenzied character, and was soon carried into the trenches. The soldier Pireiko in his reminiscences of the front confesses that this agitation-carried on chie.y by half-baked socialists among the of.cers-was not without success. "But the great weakness of the of.cial staff in their effort to turn the soldiers against the workers lay in the fact that they were of.cers. It was too fresh in the mind of every soldier what his of.cer had been to him in the past." This baiting of the workers was most bitter, however, in the capital. The industrialists along with the Kadet staff found unlimited means and opportunities for agitation in the garrison. "Towards the end of March," says Sukhanov, "you could see at all street crossings, in the tram-ways, and in every public place, workers and soldiers locked together in a furious verbal battle." Even physical .ghts occurred. The workers understood the manoeuvre and skilfully warded it off. For this it was only necessary to tell the truth-to cite the .gures of war pro.ts, to show the soldiers the factories and shops with the roar of machines, the h.e.l.l .res of the furnaces, their perpetual front where victims are innumerable. On the initiative of the workers there began regular visits by the troops of the garrison to the factories, and especially to those working on munitions. The soldiers looked and listened. The workers demonstrated and explained. These visits would end in triumphant fraternisation. The socialist papers printed innumerable resolutions of the military units as to their indestructible solidarity with the workers. By the middle of April the very topic of the con.ict had disappeared from the newspapers. The bourgeois press was silent. Thus after their economic victory, the workers won a political and moral victory.

The events connected with this struggle for the eight-hour day had an immense signif-icance for the whole future development of the revolution. The workers had gained a few free hours a week for reading, for meetings, and also for practice with the ri.e, which be-came a regular routine from the moment of the creation of the workers' militia. Moreover, after this clear lesson, the workers began to watch the Soviet leadership more closely. The authority of the Mensheviks suffered a serious drop. The Bolsheviks grew stronger in the factories, and partly too in the barracks. The soldier became more attentive, thoughtful, cautious: he understood that somebody was stalking him. The treacherous design of the demagogues turned against its own inspirers. Instead of alienation and hostility, they got a closer welding together of workers and soldiers.

The government, in spite of the idyll of "Contact," hated the Soviet, hated its leaders and their guardianship. It revealed this upon the very .rst occasion. Since the Soviet was ful.lling purely governmental functions, and this moreover at the request of the govern-ment itself whenever it became necessary to subdue the ma.s.ses, the Executive Committee requested the payment of a small subsidy for expenses. The government refused, and in spite of the repeated insistence of the Soviet, stood pat: it could not pay out the resources of the state to a "private organisation." The Soviet swallowed it. The budget of the Soviet lay on the workers who never tired of taking collections for the needs of the revolution. In those days both sides, the liberals and the socialists, kept up the decorum of a complete mutual friendliness. At the All-Russian Conference of Soviets the existence of the duel power was declared a .ction Kerensky a.s.sured the delegates from the army that between the government and the soviets there was a complete unity of problems and aims. The dual power was no less zealously denied by Tseretelli, Dan and other Soviet pillars. With the help of these lies, they tried to reinforce a rgime which was founded on lies.

However, the rgime tottered from the very .rst weeks. The leaders were tireless in the matter of organisational combinations. They tried to bring to bear all sorts of accidental representative bodies against the ma.s.ses-the soldiers against the workers, the new dumas, zemstvos and cooperatives against the soviets, the provinces against the capital, and .nally the of.cers against the people.

The soviet form does not contain any mystic power. It is by no means free from the faults of every representative system-unavoidable so long as that system is unavoidable. But its strength lies in that it reduces all these faults to a minimum.

We may con.dently a.s.sert-and the events will soon prove it-that any other representative system, atomising the ma.s.ses, would have expressed their actual will in the revolution incomparably less effectively, and with far greater delay. Of all the forms of revolutionary representation, the soviet is the most .exible, immediate and transparent. But still it is only a form. It cannot give than the ma.s.ses are capable of putting into it at a given moment. Beyond that, it can only a.s.sist the ma.s.ses in understanding the mistakes they have made and correcting them. In this function of the soviets lay one of the most important guarantees of the development of the revolution.

What was the political plan of the Executive Committee? You could hardly say that any one of the leaders had a plan thoroughly thought out. Sukhanov subsequently a.s.serted that, according to his plan, the power was turned over to the bourgeoisie only for a short time, in order that the democracy, having strengthened itself, might the more surely take it back. However, this construction-naive enough in any case-was obviously retrospective. At least it was never formulated by anybody at the time. Under the leadership of Tseretelli, the vacillations of the Executive Committee, if they were not put an end to, were at least organised into a system. Tseretelli openly announced that without a .rm bourgeois power the revolution would inevitably fail. The democracy must limit itself to bringing pressure on the liberal bourgeoisie, beware of pushing it. over by some incautious step into the camp of the reaction, and conversely, support it in so far as it backs up the conquests of the revolution. In the long run that half-minded rgime would have ended in a bourgeois republic with the socialists as a parliamentary opposition.

The main dif.culty for the leaders was not so much to .nd a general plan, as a current programme of action. The Compromisers had promised the ma.s.ses to get from the bour-geoisie by way of "pressure" a democratic policy, foreign and domestic. It is indubitable that under pressure from the popular ma.s.s, ruling cla.s.ses have more than once in history made concessions. But "pressure" means, in the last a.n.a.lysis, a threat to crowd the rul-ing cla.s.s out of the power and occupy its place. Just this weapon however was not in the hands of the democracy. They had themselves voluntarily given over the power to the bour-geoisie. At moments of con.ict the democracy did not threaten to seize the power, but on the contrary the bourgeoisie frightened them with the idea of giving it back. Thus the chief lever in the mechanics of pressure was in the hands of the bourgeoisie. This explains how, in spite of its complete impotence, the government succeeded in resisting every somewhat serious undertaking of the Soviet leaders.

By the middle of April, even the Executive Committee had proved too broad an organ for the political mysteries of the ruling nucleus, who had turned their faces completely toward the liberals. A "bureau" was therefore appointed, consisting exclusively of right defensists. From now on big politics was carried on in its own small circle. Everything seemed nicely and permanently settled. Tseretelli dominated in the Soviet without limit. Kerensky was riding higher and higher. But exactly at that moment appeared clearly the .rst alarming signs from below-from the ma.s.ses. "It is amazing," writes Stankevich, who was close to the circle of Kerensky, "that at the very this committee was formed, when responsibility for the work was a.s.sumed by a bureau selected only from defensist parties, exactly at this moment they let slip from their hands the leadership of the ma.s.ses-the ma.s.ses moved away from them." Not at all amazing, but quite in accord with the laws of things.

CHAPTER 13.

THE ARMY AND THE WAR.

In the months preceding the revolution discipline in the army was already badly shaken. You can pick up plenty of of.cers' complaints from those days: soldiers disrespectful to the command; their treatment of horses, of military property, even of weapons, indescribably bad; disorders in the military trains. It was not equally serious everywhere. But everywhere it was going in the same direction-toward ruin.

To this was now added the shock of revolution. The uprising of the Petrograd garrison took place not only without of.cers, but against them. In the critical hours the command simply hid its head. Deputy-Octobrist Shidlovsky conversed on the 27th of February with the of.cers of the Preobrazhensky regiment obviously in order to feel out their att.i.tude to the Duma-but found among these aristocrat-cavaliers a total ignorance of what was hap-pening, perhaps a half-hypocritical ignorance, for they were all frightened monarchists.

"What was my surprise," says Shidlovsky, "when the very next morning I saw the whole Preobrazhensky regiment marching down the street in military formation led by a band, their order perfect and without a single of.cer! "To be sure, a few companies arrived at the Tauride with their of.cers-more accurately, they brought their of.cers with them. But the of.cers felt that in this triumphal march they occupied the position of captives. Countess Kleinmichel, observing these scenes while under arrest, says plainly The of.cers looked like sheep led to the slaughter."

The February uprising did not create the split between soldiers and of.cers but merely brought it to the surface. In the minds of the soldiers the insurrection against the monarchy was primarily an insurrection against the commanding staff. "From the morning of the 28th of February," says the Kadet Nabokov, then wearing an of.cer's uniform, "it was dangerous to go out, because they had begun to rip off the of.cers' epaulets." That is how the .rst day of the new rgime looked in the garrison.

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The .rst care of the Executive Committee was to reconcile soldiers with of.cers. That meant nothing but to Subordinate the troops to their former command. The return of the of-.cers to their regiments was supposed, according to Sukhanov, to protect the army against "universal anarchy or the dictators of the dark and disintegrated rank-and-.le." These revo-lutionists, just like the liberals, were afraid of the soldiers, not of the of.cers. The workers on the other hand, along with the "dark" rank-and-.le, saw every possible danger exactly in the ranks of those brilliant of.cers. The reconciliation therefore proved temporary.

Stankevich describes in these words the mental att.i.tude of the soldiers to the of.cers who returned to them after the uprising: "The soldiers, breaking discipline and leaving their barracks, not only without of.cers, but in many cases against their of.cers and even after killing them at their posts, had achieved, it turned out, a great deed of liberation. If it was a great deed, and if the of.cers themselves now af.rm this, then why didn't they lead the soldiers into the streets? That would have been easier and less dangerous. Now, after the victory, they a.s.sociate themselves with this deed. But how sincerely and for how long' These words are the more instructive that the author himself was one of those "left" of.cers to whom it did not occur to lead his soldiers into the streets.

On the morning of the 28th, on Sampsonievsky Prospect, the commander of an engi-neers' division was explaining to his soldiers that "the government which everybody hated is overthrown," a new one is formed with Prince Lvov at the head therefore it is necessary to obey of.cers as before. "And now I ask all to return to their places in the barracks." A few soldiers cried : "Glad to try". The majority merely looked bewildered: "Is that all'

The scene was observed accidentally by Kayurov. It jarred him. "Permit me a word, Mr. Commander......" And without waiting for permission, Kayurov put this question: "Has the workers' blood been .owing in the streets of Petrograd for three days merely to exchange one landlord for another' Here Kayurov took the bull by the horns. His question sum-marised the whole struggle of the coming months. The antagonism between the soldier and the of.cer was a refraction of the hostility between peasant and landlord.

The of.cers in the provinces, having evidently got their instructions in good season, explained the events all in the same way: "His Majesty has exceeded his strength in his efforts for the good of the country, and has been compelled to hand over the burden of government to his brother." The reply was plain on the faces of the soldiers, complains an of.cer in a far corner of the Crimea: "Nicholas or Mikhail-it's all the same to us." When, however, this same of.cer -was compelled next morning to communicate the news of the revolutionary victory, the soldiers, he tells us, were transformed. Their questions, gestures, glances, testi.ed to the "prolonged and resolute work which somebody had been doing on those dark and cloudy brains, totally unaccustomed to think." What a gulf between the of.cer, whos brain accommodates itself without effort to the latest telegram from Petrograd, and those soldiers who are, however stif.y, nevertheless honestly, de.ning their att.i.tude to the events, independently weighing them in their calloused palms!

The high command, although formally recognising the revolution, decided not to let it through to the front. The chief of staff ordered the commander-in-chief of all the fronts, in case revolutionary delegations arrived in his territory delegations which General Alexeiev called "gangs" for short-to arrest them immediately and turn them over to court-martial. The next day the same general, in the name of "His Highness," the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaievich, demanded of the government "an end of all that is now happening in the rear of the army"-in other words, an end of the revolution.

The command delayed informing the active army about the revolution as long as pos-sible, not so much through loyalty to the monarchy as through fear of the revolution. On several fronts they established a veritable quarantine: stopped all letters from Petrograd, and held up newcomers. In that way the old rgime stole a few extra days from eternity. The news of the revolution rolled up to the line of battle not before the 5th or 6th of March-and in what form? About the same as above: "The grand duke is appointed commander-in-chief; the czar has abdicated in the name of the Fatherland; everything else as usual." In many trenches, perhaps even in the majority, the news of the revolution came from the Germans before it got there from Petrograd. Could there have been any doubt among the soldiers that the whole command was in a conspiracy to conceal the truth? And could those same soldiers trust those same of.cers to the extent of two cents, when a couple of days later they pinned on a red ribbon?

The chief of staff of the Black Sea .eet tells us, that the news of the events in Petrograd at .rst made no marked impression on the soldiers. But when the .rst socialist papers arrived from the capital, "in the wink of an eye the mood changed, meetings began, criminal agitators crawled out of their cracks." The admiral simply did not understand what was happening before his eyes. The newspapers did not create this change of mood. They merely scattered the doubt of the soldiers as to the depth of the revolution, and permitted them to reveal their true feelings without fear of reprisals from the staff. The political physiognomy of the Black Sea staff, his own among them, is characterised by the same author in a single phrase: "The majority of the of.cers of the .eet thought that without the czar the Fatherland would perish." The democrats also thought that the Fatherland would perish-unless they brought back bright lights of this kind to the "dark" sailors!

The commanding staff of the army and .eet soon divided into two groups. One group tried to stay in their places, tuning in on the revolution, registering as Social Revolution-aries. Later a part of them even tried to crawl into the Bolshevik camp. The other group strutted a while and tried to oppose the new order, but soon broke out in some sharp con-.ict and were swept away by the soldier .ood. Such groupings are so natural that they have been repeated in all revolutions. The irreconcilable of.cers of the French monarchy, those who in the words of one of them "fought as long as they could," suffered less over the disobedience of the soldiers than over the knuckling under of their n.o.ble colleagues. In the long run the majority of the old command were pushed out or suppressed, and only a small part re-educated and a.s.similated. In a more dramatic form the of.cers shared the fate of those cla.s.ses from which they were recruited.

An army is always a copy of the society it serves-with this difference, that it gives social relations a concentrated character, carrying both their positive and negative features to an extreme. It is no accident that the war did not create one single distinguished military name in Russia. The high command was suf.ciently characterised by one of its own members: "Much adventurism, much ignorance, much egotism, intrigue, careerism, greed, mediocrity and lack of foresight" writes General Zalessky-"and very little knowledge, talent or desire to risk life, or even comfort and health." Nikolai Nikolaievich, the .rst commander-in-chief, was distinguished only by his high stature and august rudeness. General Alexeiev, a grey mediocrity, the oldest military clerk of the army, won out through mere perseverance. Kornilov was a bold young commander whom even his admirers regarded as a bit simple; Kerensky's War Minister, Verkhovsky, later described him as the lion heart with the brain of a sheep. Brussilov and Admiral Kolchak a little excelled the others in culture, if you will, but in nothing else. Denikin was not without character, but for t e rest, a perfectly ordinary army general who had read .ve or six books. And after these came the Yudeniches, the Dragomirovs the Lukomskies, speaking French or not speaking it, drinking moderately or drinking hard, but amounting to absolutely nothing.

To be sure, not only feudal, but also bourgeois and democratic Russia had its repre-sentatives in the of.cers' corps. The into the ranks of the army tens of thousands of petty bourgeois youths in the capacity of of.cers, military engineers. These circles, standing al-most solid for war to complete victory, felt the necessity of some broad measures of reform, but submitted in the long run to the reactionary command. Under the czar they submitted through fear, and after the revolution through conviction-just as the democracy in the rear submitted to the bourgeoisie. The conciliatory wing of the of.cers shared subsequently the unhappy fate of the conciliatory parties-with this difference, that at the front the situation developed a thousand times more sharply. In the Executive Committee you could hold on for a long time with ambiguities; in the face of the soldiers it was not so easy.

The ill-will and friction between the democratic and aristocratic of.cers, incapable of reviving the army, only introduced a further element of decomposition. The physiognomy of the army was determined by the old Russia, and this physiognomy was completely feu-dal. The of.cers still considered the best soldier to be a humble and unthinking peasant lad, in whom no consciousness of human personality had yet awakened. Such was the "national" tradition of the Russian army-the Suvorov tradition-resting upon primitive agri-culture, serfdom and the village commune. In the eighteenth century Suvorov was still creating miracles out of this material. Leo Tolstoy, with a baronial love, idealised in his Platon-Karatayev the old type of Russian soldier, unmurmuringly submitting to nature, tyranny and death (War and Peace). The French revolution, initiating the magni.cent tri-umph of individualism in all spheres of human activity, put an end to the military art of Suvorov. Throughout the nineteenth century, and the twentieth too-throughout the whole period between the French and Russian revolutions-the czar's army was continually de-feated because it was a feudal army. Having been formed on that "national" basis, the commanding staff was distinguished by a scorn for the personality of the soldier, a spirit of pa.s.sive Mandarinism, an ignorance of its own trade, a complete absence of heroic prin-ciples, and an exceptional disposition toward petty larceny. The authority of the of.cers rested upon the exterior signs of superiority, the ritual of caste, the system of suppression, and even a special caste language-contemptible idiom of slavery which the soldier was sup-posed to converse with his of.cer. Accepting the revolution in words and swearing fealty to the Provisional Government, the czar's marshals simply shouldered off their own sins on the fallen dynasty. They graciously consented to allow Nicholas II to be declared scapegoat for the whole past. But farther than that, not a step! How could they understand that the moral essence of the revolution lay in the spiritualisation of that human ma.s.s upon whose inertness all their good fortune had rested? Denikin, appointed to command the front, an-nounced at Minsk: "I accept the revolution wholly and irrevocably. But to revolutionise the army and bring demagogism into it, I consider ruinous to the country." A cla.s.sic formula of the dull-wittedness of major-generals! As for the rank-and-.le generals, to quote Zalessky, they made but one demand: "Only keep your hands off us-that is all we care about' How-ever, the revolution could not keep its hands off them. Belonging to the privileged cla.s.ses, they stood to win nothing, but they could lose much. They were threatened with the loss not only of of.cer privileges, but also of landed property. Covering themselves with loyalty to the Provisional Government, the reactionary of.cers waged so much the more bitter a campaign against the soviets. And when they were convinced that the revolution was pen-etrating irresistibly into the soldier ma.s.s, and even into their home estates, they regarded this as a monstrous treachery on the part of Kerensky, Miliukov, even Rodziankoto say nothing of the Bolsheviks.

The life conditions of the .eet even more than the army nourished the live seeds of civil war. The life of the sailors in their steel bunkers, locked up there by force for a period of years, was not much different even in the matter of food, from that of galley slaves. Right beside them the of.cers, mostly from privileged circles and having voluntarily chosen naval service as their calling, were identifying the Fatherland with the czar, the czar with themselves, and regarding the sailor as the least valuable part of the battleship. Two alien and tight-shut worlds thus live in close contact, and never out of each other's sight. The ships of the .eet have their base in the industrial seaport towns with their great population of workers needed for building and repairing. Moreover, on the ships themselves, in the engineering and machine corps, there is no small number of quali.ed workers. Those are the conditions which convert the .eet into a revolutionary mine. In the revolutions and military uprisings of all countries the sailors have been the most explosive material; they have almost always at the .rst opportunity drastically settled accounts with their of.cers. The Russian sailors were no exception.

In Kronstadt the revolution was accompanied by an outbreak of b.l.o.o.d.y vengeance against the of.cers, who attempted, as though in horror at their own past, to conceal the revolution from the sailors. One of the .rst victims to fall was Admiral Viren, who enjoyed a well-earned hatred. A number of the commanding staff were arrested by the sailors. Those who remained free were deprived of arms.

In Helsingfors and Sveaborg, Admiral Nepenin did not admit the news of the insurrec-tion in Petrograd until the night of March 4, threatening the soldiers and sailors meanwhile with acts of repression. So much the more ferocious was the insurrection of these soldiers and sailors. It lasted all night and all day. Many of.cers were arrested. The most hateful were shoved under the ice. "Judging by Skobelev's account of the conduct of the of.cers of the .eet and the Helsingfors authorities," writes Sukhanov, who is by no means indulgent to the "dark rank-and .le," "it is a wonder these excesses were so few."

But in the land forces too there were b.l.o.o.d.y encounters, several waves of them. At .rst this was an act of vengeance for the past, for the contemptible striking of soldier. The was no lack of memories that burned like ulcers. In 1915 disciplinary punishment by .ogging had been of.cially introduced into the czar's army. The of.cers .ogged soldiers upon their own authority-soldiers who were often the fathers of families. But it was not always a question of the past. At the All-Russian Conference of Soviets, a delegate speaking for the army stated that as early as the 15th or 17th of March an order had been issued introducing corporal punishment in the active army. A deputy of the Duma, returning from the front, reported that the Cossacks said to him, in the absence of of.cers: "Here, you say, is the order. [Evidently the famous Order Number 1, of which we will speak further.] We got it yesterday, and yet to-day an of.cer soaked me on the jaw." The Bolsheviks went out to try to restrain the soldiers from excesses as often as the Conciliators. But b.l.o.o.d.y acts of retribution were as inevitable as the recoil of a gun. The liberals had no other ground for calling the February revolution bloodless except that it gave them the power.

Some of the of.cers managed to stir up bitter con.icts about the red ribbons, which were in the eyes of the soldiers a symbol of the break with the past. The commander of the Sumsky regiment got killed in this way. Another commander, having ordered newly arrived reinforcements to remove their ribbons, was arrested by the soldiers, and locked up in the guard house. A number of encounters also resulted from the czar's portraits, not yet removed from the of.cial quarters. Was this out of loyalty to the monarchy? In a majority of cases it was mere lack of con.dence in the revolution, an act of personal insurance. But the soldiers were not wrong in seeing the ghost of the old rgime lurking behind those portraits.

It was not thought-out measures from above, but spasmodic movements from below, which established the new rgime in the army. The disciplinary power of the of.cers was neither annulled nor limited. It merely fell away of itself during the .rst weeks of March. "It was clear," said the chief of the Black Sea staff, "that if an of.cer attempted to impose disciplinary punishment upon a soldier, the power did not exist to get it executed." In that you have one of the sure signs of a genuinely popular revolution.

With the falling away of their disciplinary power, the practical bankruptcy of the staff of of.cers was laid bare. Stankevich, who possessed both a gift of observation and an interest in military affairs, gives a withering account in this respect of the commanding staff. The drilling still went on according to the old rules, he tells us, totally out of relation to the demands of the war. "Such exercises were merely a test of the patience and obedience of the soldiers." The of.cers, of course, tried to lay the blame for this, their own bankruptcy, upon the revolution.

Although they were quick with cruel reprisals, the soldiers were also inclined to child-like trustfulness and self-forgetful acts of grat.i.tude. For a short time the deputy Filomenko, a priest and a liberal, seemed to the soldiers at the front a standard-bearer of the idea of freedom, a shepherd of the revolution. The old churchly ideas united in funny ways with the new faith. The soldiers carried this priest on their hands, raised him above their heads, carefully seated him in his sleigh. And he afterward, choking with rapture, reported to the Duma: "We could not .nish our farewells. They kissed our hands and feet." This deputy thought that the Duma had an immense authority in the army. What had authority in the army was the revolution. And it was the revolution that threw this blinding re.ection on various accidental .gures.

The symbolic cleansing carried out by Guchkov in the upper circles of the army-the removal of a few score of generals-gave no satisfaction to the soldiers, and at the same time created a state of uncertainty among the high of.cers. Each one was afraid that he would lose his place. The majority swam with the current, spoke softly and clenched their .sts in their pockets. It was still worse with the middle and lower of.cers, who came face to face with the soldiers. Here there was no governmental cleansing at all. Seeking a legal method, the soldiers of one artillery battery wrote to the Executive Committee and the State Duma about their commander: "Brothers, we humbly request you to remove our domestic enemy, Vanchekhaza." Receiving no answer to such pet.i.tions, the soldiers would employ what means they had: disobedience, crowding out, even arrest. Only after that the command would wake up, remove the arrested or a.s.saulted of.cer, sometimes trying to punish the soldiers, but oftener leaving them unpunished in order to avoid complicating things. This created an intolerable situation for the of.cers, and yet gave no clear de.nition to the situation of the soldiers.

Even many .ghting of.cers, those who seriously cared about the fate of the army, insisted upon the necessity of a general clean-up of the commanding staff. Without that, they said, it is useless to think of reviving the .ghting ability of the troops. The soldiers presented to the deputies of the Duma no less convincing arguments. Formerly, they said, when they had a grievance, they had to complain to the of.cers, who ordinarily paid no attention to their complaint. And what were they to do now? The of.cers were the same-the fate of their complaints would be the same. "It was very dif.cult to answer that question," a deputy confesses. But nevertheless that question contained the whole fate of the army and fore-ordained its future.

It would be a mistake to represent the state of affairs in the army as h.o.m.ogeneous throughout the country in all kinds of troops and all regiments. The variation. was very considerable. While the sailors of the Baltic .eet responded to the .rst news of the revo-lution by killing of.cers, right beside them in the garrison at Helsingfors the of.cers were occupying a leading position in the soldiers' soviet by the beginning of April, and here an imposing general was speaking at celebrations in the name of the Social Revolutionaries. There were many such contrasts between hate and trustfulness. But nevertheless the army was like a system of communicating vessels, and the political mood of the soldiers and sailors gravitated to wards a single level.

Discipline was maintained somehow while the soldiers were counting on a quick and decisive change. "But when the soldiers saw," to quote a delegate from the front, "that everything remained as before-the same oppression, slavery, ignorance, the same insults-an agitation began." Nature, who was not thoughtful enough to arm the majority of men with rhinoceros skin, also endowed the soldier with a nervous system. Revolutions serve to remind us from time to time of this carelessness on the part of nature.

In the rear as well as at the front, accidental pretexts easily led to con.icts. The soldiers were given the right to attend theatres, meetings, concerts, etc., "equally with all citizens." Many soldiers interpreted this as a right to attend theatres free. The ministry explained that "freedom" was to be understood in a speculative sense. But a people in insurrection has never shown any inclination towards Platonism or Kantianism.

The worn-out tissue of discipline broke through in various ways at different times, in different garrisons, and in different regiments. A commander would often think that everything had gone well in his regiment until certain newspapers appeared, or until the arrival of some outside agitator. It was all really the work of deep inexorable forces.

The liberal deputy Ya.n.u.shkevich came back from the front with a generalisation-that the disorganisation is worst of all in the "green" troops composed of muzhiks. "In the more revolutionary regiments the soldiers are getting along very well with the of.cers." As a matter of fact discipline rested for the most part on two foundations: the privileged cavalry made up of well-off peasants, and the artillery or technical branch in general with a high percentage of workers and intellectuals. The land-owning Cossacks held out longest of all, dreading an Agrarian revolution in which the majority of them would lose, and not gain. More than once after the revolution individual Cossack divisions carried out punitive operations, but in general these differences were merely in the date and tempo of disintegration.

The blind struggle had its ebbs and .ows. The of.cers would try to adapt themselves; the soldiers would again begin to bide their time. But during this temporary relief, during these days and weeks of truce, the social hatred which was decomposing the army of the old rgime would become more and more intense. Oftener and oftener it would .ash out in a kind of heat lightning. In Moscow, in one of the amphitheatres, a meeting of invalids was called, soldiers and of.cers together. An orator-cripple began to cast aspersions on the of.cers. A noise of protest arose, a stamping of shoes, canes, crutches. "And how long ago were you, Mr. Of.cer, insulting the soldiers with lashes and .sts' These wounded, sh.e.l.l-shocked, mutilated people stood like two walls, one facing the other. Crippled soldiers against crippled of.cers, the majority against the minority, crutches against crutches. That nightmare scene in the amphitheatre foreshadowed the ferocity of the coming civil war.

Above all these .uctuations and contradictions in the army and in the country, one eternal question was hanging, summed up in the short word, war. From the Baltic to the Black Sea, from the Black Sea to the Caspian and beyond into the depths of Persia, on an immeasurable front, stood sixty-eight corps of infantry and nine of cavalry. What should happen to them further? What was to be done with the war?

In the matter of military supplies the army had been considerably strengthened before the revolution. Domestic production for its needs had increased, and likewise the importa-tion of War material through Murmansk and Archangel-especially artillery from the Allies. Ri.es, cannon, cartridges, were on hand in incomparably greater quant.i.ties than during the .rst years of the war. New infantry divisions were in process of organisation. The engineer-ing corps had been enlarged. On this ground a number of the unhappy military chieftains attempted later to prove that Russia had stood on the eve of victory, and that only the rev-olution had prevented it. Twelve years before, Kuropatkin and Linevich had a.s.serted with as good a foundation that Witte prevented them from cleaning up the j.a.panese. In reality Russia was farther from victory in 1917 than at any other time. Along with the increase in ammunition there appeared in the army toward the end of 1916 an extreme lack of food sup-plies. Typhus and scurvy took more victims than the .ghting. The breakdown of transport alone cancelled all strategy involving large-scale regroupings of the military ma.s.s. More-over an extreme lack of horses often condemned the artillery to inaction. But the chief trouble was not even here; it was the moral condition of the army that was hopeless. You might describe it by saying that the army as an army no longer existed. Defeats, retreats, and the rottenness of the ruling group had utterly undermined the troops. You could no more correct that with administrative measures, than you could change the nervous system of the country. The soldier now looked at a heap of cartridges with the same disgust that he would at a pile of wormy meat; the whole thing seemed to him unnecessary and good for nothing; a deceit and a thievery. And his of.cer could say nothing convincing to him, couldn't even make up his mind to crack him on the jaw. The of.cer himself felt deceived by the higher command, and moreover not infrequently ashamed before the soldiers for his own superiors. The army was incurably sick. It was still capable of speaking its word in the revolution, but so far as making war was concerned, it did not exist. n.o.body believed in the success of the war, the of.cers as little as the soldiers. n.o.body wanted to .ght any more, neither the army nor the people.

To be sure, in the high chancelleries, where a special kind of life is lived, they were still chattering, through mere inertia, about great operations, about the spring offensive, the capture of the Dardanelles. In the Crimea they even got ready a big army for this latter purpose. It stood in the bulletins that the best element, of the army had been designated for the siege. They sent the regiments of the guard from Petrograd. However, according to the account of an of.cer who began drilling them on the 25th of February-two days before the revolution-these reinforcements turned out to be indescribably bad. Not the slightest desire to .ght was to be seen in those imperturbable blue, hazel and grey eyes. "All their thoughts and their aspirations were for one thing only-peace."

There is no lack of such testimony. The revolution merely brought to the surface what already existed. The slogan "Down with the war' became for that reason one of the chief slogans of the February days. It came from demonstrations of women, from the workers of the Vyborg quarter, from the regiments of the Guard. Early in March when deputies from the Duma made a tour of the front, the soldiers, especially the older ones, would continually ask them:" What are they saying about the land' The deputies answered evasively that the land question would be decided by the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. But here would sound out a voice betraying the hidden thought of everybody: "Well, as for the land, if I'm not here, you know, I won't need it." Such was the original soldier programme of revolution: .rst peace, and then the land.

Toward the end of March at the All-Russian Conference of Soviets, where there was a good deal of patriotic bragging, one of the delegates representing the soldiers in the trenches reported very sincerely how the front received the news of the revolution: "All the soldiers said, "Thank G.o.d! Maybe now we will have peace!" The trenches instructed the delegate to tell the conference "We are ready to lay down our lives for freedom, but just the same, Comrades, we want an end of the war." That was the living voice of reality-especially the latter half of it. We will wait a while if we have to, but you up there at the top, hurry along with the peace.

The czar's troops in France in a completely unnatural atmosphere-being moved by the same feelings, pa.s.sed through the same stages of disintegration. "When we heard that the czar had abdicated," an illiterate middle-aged peasant soldier explained to his of.cer, "we all thought it meant that the war was over.... The czar sent us to war, and what is the use of freedom if I have got to rot in the trenches again?" That was the genuine soldier philosophy of the revolution-not brought in from the outside. No agitator could think up those simple and convincing words.

The liberals and the half-liberal socialists tried afterwards to represent the revolution as a patriotic uprising. On the 2nd of March, Miliukov explained to the French journalists: "The Russian revolution was made in order to remove the obstacles on Russia's road to victory." Here hypocrisy goes hand-in-hand with self-deceit-the hypocrisy somewhat the larger of the two. The candid reactionaries saw things clearer. Von Struve, a German Pan-Slavist, a Lutheran Greek Orthodox, and a Marxian monarchist, better de.ned the actual sources of the revolution, although in the language of reactionary hatred. "In so far as the popular, and especially the soldier, ma.s.ses took part in the revolution, it was not a patriotic explosion, but a riotous self-demobilisation, and was directed straight against a prolongation of the War. That is, it was made in order to stop the War."

Along with a true thought, those words contain also a slander. The riotous demobilisa-tion was growing as a matter of fact right out of the war. The revolution did not create, but on the contrary checked it. Deserting, extraordinarily frequent on the eve of the revolution, was very infrequent in the .rst weeks after. The army was waiting. In the hope that the revolution would give peace, the soldier did not refuse to put a shoulder under the front: Otherwise, he thought, the new government won't be able to conclude a peace.

"The soldiers are de.nitely expressing the opinion," reports the chief of the Grenadier Division on the 23rd of March, "that we can only defend ourselves and not attack." Military reports and political speeches repeat this thought in various forms. Ensign Krylenko, an old revolutionist and a future commander-in-chief under the Bolsheviks, testi.ed that for the soldier the war question was settled in those days with this formula: "Support the front, but don't join the offensive." In a more solemn but wholly sincere language, that meant: defend freedom.

"We mustn't stick our bayonets in the ground!" Under the in.uence of obscure and con-tradictory moods the soldiers those days frequently refused even to listen to the Bolsheviks. They thought perhaps, impressed by certain unskilful speeches that the Bolsheviks were not concerned with the defence of revolution and might prevent the government from conclud-ing peace. The social patriotic papers and agitators more and more cultivated this idea among the soldiers. But even though sometimes preventing the Bolsheviks from speaking, the soldiers from the very .rst days decisively rejected the idea of an offensive. To the politicians of the capital this seemed some kind of a misunderstanding which could be re-moved with appropriate pressure. The agitation for war reached extraordinary heights. The bourgeois press in millions of issues portrayed the problems of the revolution in the light of "War to complete victory." The Compromisers hummed the same tune-at .rst under their breath, then more boldly. The in.uence of the Bolsheviks, very weak in the army at the moment of the revolution, became even weaker when thousands of workers who had been banished to the front for striking left its ranks. The desire for peace thus found no open and clear expression exactly where it was most intense. This situation made it possible for the commanders and commissars, who were looking round for comforting illusions, to deceive themselves about the actual state of affairs. In the articles and speeches of those times it is frequently a.s.serted that the soldiers declined the offensive because they did not correctly understand the formula "without annexations or indemnities." The Compromisers spared no effort to explain that defensive warfare permits taking the offensive, and sometimes even requires it. As though that scholastic question were at issue! An offensive meant re-opening the war. A waiting support of the front meant armistice. The soldiers' theory and practice of defensive warfare was a form of silent, and later indeed of quite open, agreement with the Germans: "Don't touch us and we won't touch you." More than that the army had nothing to give to the war.

The soldiers were still less open to warlike persuasions because, under the form of preparation for an offensive, reactionary of.cers were obviously trying to get the reins in their hands. In the soldiers' conversation appeared the phrase: "Bayonet for the Germans, b.u.t.t for the inside enemy." The bayonet, however, had here a defensive signi.cance. The soldiers in the trenches never thought of the Dardanelles. The desire for peace was a mighty underground current which must soon break out on the surface.

Although he did not deny that negative signs were "to be observed" in the army, Mil-iukov tried for a long time after the revolution to a.s.sert that the army was capable of ful-.lling the tasks laid out for it by the Entente. "The Bolshevik propaganda," he writes in his character of historian, "by no means immediately reached the front. For the .rst month or moth and-a-half after the revolution the army remained healthy." He approaches the whole question at the level of propaganda, as though that exhausts the historic process. Under the form of a belated struggle against Bolsheviks, to whom he attributes veritably mystic powers, Miliukov carries on his struggle against facts. We have already seen how the army looked in reality. Let us see how the commanders themselves appraised its .ghting capacity in the .rst weeks, and even days, after the revolution.

On March 6 the commander-in-chief of the northern front, General Ruszky, informs the Executive Committee that a complete insubordination of the soldiers is beginning, popular personalities must be sent to the front in order to introduce some sort of tranquillity into the army.

The chief of the staff of the Black Sea .eet says in his memoirs: "From the .rst days of the revolution it was clear to me that it was impossible to wage war, and that the war was lost." Kolchak, according to him, was of the same opinion, and if he remained at his post as commander at the front, it was merely to defend the staff of.cers against violence.

Count Ignatiev, who occupied a high command in the Imperial Guard, wrote to Nabokov in March: "You must clearly understand that the war is .nished, that we can't and won't .ght any longer. Intelligent people ought to be thinking up a way to liquidate the war painlessly, otherwise there will be a catastrophe...." Guchkov told Nabokov at the same time that he was receiving such letters by the thousand. Certain super.cially more hopeful reports, rare enough in any case, were mostly contradicted by their own supplementary ex-planations. "The desire of the troops for victory remains," says the commander of the 2nd Army, Danilov. "In some regiments it is even stronger." But just here he adds: "Discipline has fallen off. . . . It would be well to postpone offensive action until the situation quiets down (say one to three months)." And then an unexpected supplement: "Only 50 per cent. of the reinforcements are arriving. If they continue to melt away in the future, and are equally undisciplined, we cannot count on the success of the offensive."

"Our Division is fully capable of defensive action," reports the valiant commander of the 51st Infantry Division, and immediately adds: "It is necessary to rescue the army from the in.uence of the Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies." That, however, was not so easy to do.

The chief of the 182nd Division reports to the commander of the corps: "With every day misunderstandings are increasing, essentially about tri.es, but ominous in their character. The soldiers are increasingly nervous, and the of.cers still more so."

This is so far only scattered testimony, although there is much of it. But on the 18th of March there was held at staff head-quarters a conference of high of.cers on the condition of the army. The conclusion of the central organs of command was unanimous: "It will be impossible to send troops to the front in suf.cient numbers to replace the losses, for there is unrest among all the reserves. The army is sick. It will probably take two or three months to adjust the relations between of.cers and soldiers." The generals did not understand that the disease could only progress. For the present they observed a decline of spirits among the of.cers, agitation among the troops, and a considerable tendency to desert. "The .ghting capacity of the army is lowered, and it is dif.cult at present to rely on the possibility of an advance." Conclusion: "It is now impossible to carry into execution the active operations indicated for the spring."

In the weeks following, the situation continues to get worse a and similar testimony is endlessly multiplied. Late in March the commander of the 5th Army, General Dragomirov, wrote to General Ruszky: "The .ghting spirit has declined. Not only is there no desire among the soldiers to take the offensive, but even a simple stubbornness on the defensive has decreased to a degree threatening the success of the war.... Politics, which has spread through all the layers of the army, has made the whole military ma.s.s desire only one thing-to end the war and go home."

General Lukomsky, one of the pillars of the reactionary staff, dissatis.ed with the new order, took over the command of a corps and found, as he tells us, that discipline remained only in he artillery and engineering division in which there were many of.cers and soldiers of the regular army. "As for the three infantry divisions, they were all on the road to complete disintegration."

Deserting, which had decreased after the revolution under the in.uence of hope, in-creased again under the in.uence of disappointment. In one week, from the 1st to the 7th of April, according to the report of General Alexeiev, approximately 8,000 soldiers deserted from the northern and western fronts. "I read with the utmost astonishment," he wrote to Guchkov, "the irresponsible reports as to the 'excellent' temper of the army, What is the use? It will not deceive the Germans, and for us it is a fatal self-deception."

So far, it is well to note, there is hardly a reference to the Bolsheviks. The majority of of.cers had hardly learned that strange name. When they raised the question of the causes of the army's disintegration, it was newspapers, agitators, soviets, "politics" in general-in a word, the February revolution.

You still could .nd individual of.cer-optimists who hoped that everything would turn out all right. There were still more who intentionally shut their eyes to the facts, in order not to cause unpleasantness to the new government. On the other hand a considerable number, especially of the highest of.cers, consciously exaggerated the signs of disintegration in order to get from the government some decisive action, which they themselves, however, were not quite ready to call by name. But the fundamental picture is indubitable. Finding the army sick, the revolution clothed the inexorable process of its decline in political forms which became more cruelly de.nite from week to week. The revolution carried to its logical end not only the pa.s.sionate thirst for peace, but also the hostility of the soldier ma.s.s to the commanding staff and to the ruling cla.s.ses in general.

In the middle of April, Alexeiev made a personal report to the government on the mood of the army, in which he evidently ,did not hesitate to lay on colours. "I well remember," writes ,Nabokov, "what a feeling of awe and hopelessness seized me." We may a.s.sume that, Miliukov was present during that report, which must have occurred in the .rst six weeks after the revolution. More likely indeed it was he who had summoned Alexeiev with the desire of frightening his colleagues, and through their, mediation, his friends the socialists.

Guchkov actually had a conversation after that with the representatives of the Exec-utive Committee. "A ruinous fraternisation has begun," he complained. "Cases of direct insubordination are reported. Orders are talked over in army organisations and at general meetings before being carried out. In such and such regiments they wouldn't even hear of active operations. When people are hoping that peace will come tomorrow"-Guchkov added, wisely enough-" you can't expect them to give up their lives to-day." From this the War Minister drew the conclusion: "We must stop talking out loud about peace." But since the revolution was just what had taught people to say out loud what they were formerly thinking in silence, this meant stop the revolution.

The soldier, of course, from the very .rst day of the war, did not want either to die or to .ght. But he did not want this just the way an artillery horse does not want to drag a heavy gun through the mud. Like the horse, he never thought that he might get rid of the load they had hitched to him. There was no connection between his will and the events of the war. The revolution showed him that connection. For millions of soldiers the revolution meant the right to a personal life, and .rst of all the right to life in general, the right to protect their lives from bullets and sh.e.l.ls, and by the same token their faces from the of.cers' .sts. In this sense it was said above, that the fundamental psychological process taking place in the army was the awakening of personality. In this volcanic eruption of individualism, which often took anarchistic forms the educated cla.s.ses saw only treachery to the nation. But as a matter of fact in the stormy speeches of the soldiers, in their intemperate protests, even in their b.l.o.o.d.y excesses, a nation was merely beginning to form itself out of impersonal prehistoric raw material. This .ood of ma.s.s individualism. so hateful to the bourgeoisie, was due to the very character of the February revolution, to the fact that it was a bourgeois revolution.

But that was not its only content, either. For besides the peasant and his soldier son, the worker took part in this revolution. The worker had long ago felt himself a personality, and into the war not only with hatred of it, but also with the thought of struggling against it. The revolution meant only the naked fact of conquering, but also the partial triumph of his ideas. The overthrow of the monarchy was for him only a .rst step, and he did not pause on it but hastened toward other goals. The whole question for him was, how much farther would the soldier and peasant go with him? What good is the land to me if I won't be there? asked the soldier. What good is freedom to me, he repeated after the worker before the closed doors of the theatre, if the keys to freedom are in the hand of the master? Thus across the immeasurable chaos of the February revolution, the steely gleams of October were already visible.

CHAPTER 14.

THE RULING GROUP AND THE WAR.

What did the Provisional Government and the Executive Committee intend to do with this war and this army?

First of all it is necessary to understand the policy of the liberal bourgeoisie, since they played the leading role. In external appearance the war policy of liberalism remained ag-gressive, patriotic, annexationist, irreconcilable. In reality it was self-contradictory, treach-erous, and rapidly becoming defeatist.

"Even if there had been no revolution," wrote Rodzianko later, "the war would have been lost just the same, and in all probability a separate peace signed." Rodzianko's views were not distinguished by independence, and for that reason ably typify the average opin-ions of liberally conservative circles. The mutiny of the battalions of the Guard foretold to the possessing cla.s.ses not victory abroad but defeat at home. The liberals were the less able to deceive themselves about this, because they had foreseen, and to the best of their ability struggled against, this danger. The unexpected revolutionary optimism of Miliukov-declaring the revolution a step towards victory was in reality the last resort of desperation. The question of war and peace had almost ceased for the liberals to be an independent question. They felt that they would not be able to use the revolution for the purposes of war, and so much the more imperative became their other task: to use the war' against the revolution.

Problems concerning the international situation of Russia after the war, debts and new loans, the capital market and the sales market, of course still confronted the leaders of the Russian bourgeoisie; but these questions did not direc