History of the Russian Revolution Vol 1 Part 9

From the year 1905 the Bolshevik Party had waged a struggle against the autocracy un-der the slogan "Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry." This slogan as well as its theoretical background, derives from Lenin. In opposition to the Mensheviks, whose theoretician, Plekhanov, stubbornly opposed the "mistaken idea of the possibility of accomplishing a bourgeois revolution without the bourgeoisie," Lenin considered that the Russian bourgeoisie was already incapable of leading its own revolution. Only the prole-tariat and peasantry in close union could carry through a democratic revolution against the monarchy and the landlords. The victory of this union, according to Lenin, should inaugu-rate a democratic dictatorship, which was not only not identical with the dictatorship of the proletariat, but was in sharp contrast to it, for its problem was not the creation of a socialist society, nor even the creation of forms of transition to such a society, but merely a ruthless cleansing of the Augean stables of medievalism. The goal of the revolutionary struggle was fully described in three militant slogans : Democratic Republic, Con.scation of the Landed Estates, Eight-Hour Working Day-colloquially called the three whales of Bolshevism, by a.n.a.logy with those whales upon which according to an old popular fable the earth reposes.

The question of the possibility of a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peas-antry hinged upon the question of the ability of the peasantry to accomplish their own revolution-that is, to put forward a new government capable of liquidating the monarchy and the landed n.o.bility. To be sure, the slogan of democratic dictatorship a.s.sumed also a partic.i.p.ation in the revolutionary government of workers' representatives. But this par-tic.i.p.ation was limited in advance by the role attributed to the proletariat as ally on the 223.

left in solving the problems of the peasant revolution. The popular and even of.cially recognised idea of the hegemony of the proletariat in the democratic revolution could not, consequently, mean anything more than that the workers' party would help the peasantry with a political weapon from its a.r.s.enal, suggest to them the best means and methods for liquidating the feudal society, and show them how to apply these means and methods. In any case, to speak of the leading role of the proletariat in the bourgeois revolution did not at all signify that the proletariat would use the peasant uprising in order with its support to place upon the order of the day its own historic task-that is, the direct transition to a socialist society. The hegemony of the proletariat in the democratic revolution was sharply distinguished from the dictatorship of the proletariat, and polemically contrasted against it. The Bolshevik Party had been educated in these ideas ever since the spring of 1905.

The actual course of the February revolution disrupted this accustomed schema of Bol-shevism. It is true that the revolution was accomplished by a union of the workers and peasants. The fact that the peasants functioned chie.y in the guise of soldier's did not alter this. The behavior of the peasant army of czarism would have had decisive import even if the revolution had developed in peace times. So much the more natural if in war time these millions of armed men at .rst completely concealed the peasantry. After the victory of the insurrection the workers and soldiers were bosses of the situation. In that sense it would seem possible to say that a democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants had been established. But as a matter of fact, the February overturn led to a bourgeois govern-ment, in which the power of the possessing cla.s.ses was limited by the not yet fully realised sovereignty of the workers' and soldiers' soviets. All the cards were mixed. Instead of a revolutionary dictatorship -i.e. the most concentrated power-there was established the .abby rgime of the dual power, in which the feeble energy of the ruling cla.s.ses was wasted in overcoming inner con.icts. n.o.body had foreseen this rgime. And indeed one cannot de-mand from a prognosis that it indicate not only the fundamental tendencies of development, but also accidental conjunctions. "Who ever made a great revolution knowing beforehand how to carry it through to the end?" asked Lenin later. "Where could you get such knowl-edge? It is not to be found in books. There are no such books. Our decisions could only be born out of the experience of the ma.s.ses."

But human thought is Conservative, and the thought of to stand by the old formula and regarded the February revolution, notwithstanding its obvious establishment of two incompatible regimes, merely as the .rst stage of a bourgeois revolution. At the end of March Rykov sent to Pravda from Siberia, in the name of the Social Democrats, a telegram of greeting to the victory of the "national revolution," whose problem was "the winning of political liberty." All the leading Bolsheviks-not one exception is known to us-considered that the democratic dictatorship still lay in the future. After this Provisional Government of the bourgeoisie "exhausts itself," then a democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants will be established as the forerunner of the bourgeois parliamentary rgime. This was a completely erroneous perspective. The rgime which issued from the February revolution not only was not preparing a democratic dictatorship, but was a living and exhaustive proof of the fact that such a dictatorship was impossible. That the compromising democracy did not accidentally, through the light-mindedness of Kerensky and the limited intelligence of Cheidze, hand over the power to the liberals, is demonstrated by the fact that throughout the eight months following, it struggled with all its force to preserve the bourgeois government. It repressed the workers, peasants and soldiers, and on the 25th of October it fell .ghting at its post as ally and defender of the bourgeoisie. Moreover it was clear enough from the beginning, when the democracy, with gigantic tasks before it and the unlimited support of the ma.s.ses, voluntarily renounced the power, that this was not due to political principles or prejudices, but to the hopelessness of the situation of the petty bourgeoisie in the capitalist society-especially in a period of war and revolution, when the fundamental life problems of countries, peoples and cla.s.ses are under decision. In handing Miliukov the sceptre, the petty bourgeoisie said? No, I am not equal to these tasks."

The peasantry, lifting on its shoulders the conciliatory democracy, contains in itself in a rudimentary form all the cla.s.ses of bourgeois society. Along with the petty bourgeoisie of the cities-which in Russia, however, never played a serious role-it const.i.tutes that pro-toplasm out of which new cla.s.ses have been differentiated in the past, and continue to be differentiated in the present. The peasantry always has two faces, one turned towards the proletariat the other to the bourgeoisie. But the intermediary, compromising position of "peasant" parties like the Social Revolutionaries, can be maintained only in conditions of comparative political stagnation; in a revolutionary epoch the moment inevitably comes when the petty bourgeoisie is compelled to choose. The Social Revolutionaries and Men-sheviks made their choice from the .rst moment. They destroyed the "democratic dicta-torship" in embryo, in order to prevent it from becoming a bridge to the dictatorship of the proletariat. But they thus opened a road to the latter-only a different road, not through them, but against them.

The further development of the revolution must obviously proceed from new facts, not old schemas. Through their representatives the ma.s.ses were drawn, partly against their will, partly without their consciousness, into the mechanics of the two power rgime. They now had to pa.s.s through this in order to learn by experience that it could not give them ei-ther peace or land. To recoil from the two-power rgime henceforward meant for the ma.s.ses to break with the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks. But it is quite evident that a political turning of the workers and soldiers toward the Bolsheviks, having knocked over the whole two-power construction, could now no longer mean anything but the establish-ment of a dictatorship of the proletariat resting upon a union of the workers and peasants. In case the popular ma.s.s had been defeated, only a military dictatorship of capital could have risen on the ruins of the Bolshevik Party. "The democratic dictatorship" was impossible in either case. In looking toward it, the Bolsheviks had actually to turn their faces toward a phantom of the past. It was in this position that Lenin found them when he arrived with his in.exible determination to bring the party out on a new road.

Lenin himself, to be sure, did not replace the formula of democratic dictatorship by any other formula, even conditional or hypothetical, until the very beginning of the February revolution. Was he correct in this? We think not. What happened in the party after the revolution revealed all too alarmingly the belatedness of that re-arming-which moreover in the given situation no one but Lenin himself could have carried through. He had prepared himself for that. He had heated his steel white hot and re-tempered it in the .res of the war. In his eyes the general prospect of the historic process had changed; the shock of the war had sharply advanced the possible date of a socialist revolution in the West. While remain-ing for Lenin still democratic, the Russian revolution was to give the stimulus to a socialist revolution in Europe, which should then drag belated Russia into its whirlpool. Such was Lenin's general conception when he left Zurich. The letter to the Swiss workers which we have already quoted says: "Russia is a peasant country, one of the most backward of European countries. Here socialism cannot immediately conquer, but the peasant character of the country, with enormous tracts of land remaining intact in the hands of the n.o.bility, can, on the basis of the experience of 1905, give enormous scope to a bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia, and make our revolution a prologue to the worldwide socialist revo-lution, a step leading to it." In this sense Lenin now .rst wrote that the Russian proletariat will begin the socialist revolution.

Such was the connecting link between the old position of Bolshevism, which limited the revolution to democratic aims, and. the new position which Lenin .rst presented to the party in his theses of April 4. This new prospect of an immediate transition to the dictatorship of the proletariat seemed completely unexpected, contradictory to tradition, and indeed simply would not .t into the mind. Here it is necessary to remember that up to the outbreak of the February revolution and for a time after Trotskyism did not mean the idea that it was impossible to build a socialist society within the national boundaries of Russia (which "possibility" was never expressed by anybody up to 1924 and hardly came into anybody's head). Trotskyism meant the idea that the Russian proletariat might win the power in advance of the Western proletariat, and that in that case it could not con.ne itself within the limits of a democratic dictatorship but would be compelled to undertake the initial socialist measures. It is not surprising, then, that the April theses of Lenin were condemned as Trotskyist.

The counter-arguments of the old Bolsheviks developed along several lines. The prin-c.i.p.al quarrel was about the question whether the bourgeois-democratic revolution was .n-ished. Inasmuch as the agrarian revolution was not yet complete, the opponents of Lenin justly a.s.serted that the democratic revolution as a whole was not .nished, and hence, they concluded, there is no place for a dictatorship of the proletariat, even though the social conditions of Russia render it possible in general at a more or less proximate date. It was in this way that the editors of Pravda posed the question in the pa.s.sage we have already cited. Later on, in the April conference, Kamenev repeated this: "Lenin is wrong when he says that the bourgeois democratic revolution is .nished. . . . The cla.s.sical relics of feudalism, the landed estates, are not yet liquidated.... The state is not transformed into a democratic society. . . . It is early to say that the bourgeois democracy has exhausted all its possibilities."

"The democratic dictatorship is our foundation stone" -this was Tomsky's argument-"We ought to organise the power of the proletariat and the peasants, and we ought to dis-tinguish this from the Commune, since that means the power of the proletariat alone.

"Rykov seconded him: "Gigantic revolutionary tasks stand before us, but the ful.llment of these tasks does not carry us beyond the framework of the bourgeois rgime."

Lenin saw, of course, as clearly as his opponents that the democratic revolution was not .nished, that, on the contrary without really beginning it had already begun to drop into the past. But from this very fact it resulted that only the rulers of a new cla.s.s could carry it through to the end, and that this could be achieved no otherwise but by drawing the ma.s.ses out from under the in.uence of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries-that is to say, from the indirect in.uence of the liberal bourgeoisie. The connection of those parties with the workers, and especially with the soldiers, was based on the idea of defence-"defence of the country " or "defence of the revolution." Lenin, therefore, demanded an irreconcilable opposition to all shades of social patriotism. Separate the party from the backward ma.s.ses, in order afterwards to free those ma.s.ses from their backwardness. "We must abandon the old Bolshevism," he kept repeating. "We must make a sharp division between the, line of the petty bourgeoisie and the wage worker."

At a super.cial glance it might seem that the age-old enemies had exchanged weapons. The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries now represented a majority of the workers and soldiers, and seemed to have realised that political union of the proletariat and peasantry which Bolshevism had always been advocating against the Mensheviks. Lenin was de-manding that the proletarian vanguard break away from this union. In reality, however, both sides remained true to themselves. The Mensheviks, as always, saw their mission in supporting the liberal bourgeoisie. Their union with the Social Revolutionaries was only a means of broadening and strengthening this support. On the contrary, the break of the proletarian vanguard with the petty bourgeois bloc meant the preparation of a union of the workers and peasants under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party-that is, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Another argument against Lenin was derived from the backwardness of Russia. A gov-ernment of the working cla.s.s inevitably means a transition to socialism, but economically and culturally Russia is not ripe for this. We must carry through the democratic revolution. Only a socialist revolution in the West can justify a dictatorship of the proletariat here. This was Rykov's argument at the April conference. That the cultural-economic condition of Russia in itself was inadequate for the construction of a socialist society was mere a-b-c to Lenin. But societies are not so rational in building that the dates for proletarian dicta-torships arrive exactly at that moment when the economic and cultural conditions are ripe for socialism. If humanity evolved as systematically as that, there would be no need for dictatorship, nor indeed for revolutions in general. Living historic societies are inharmo-nious through and through, and the more so the more delayed their development. The fact. that in a backward country like Russia the bourgeoisie had decayed before the complete victory of the bourgeois rgime, and that there was n.o.body but the proletariat to replace it in the position of national leadership, was an expression of this in harmony. The economic backwardness of Russia does not relieve the working cla.s.s of the obligation to ful.l its allotted task, but merely surrounds this task with extraordinary dif.culties. To Rykov, who kept repeating that socialism must come from countries with a more developed industry, Lenin gave a simple but suf.cient answer: "You can't say who will begin and who .nish."

In 1921, when the party-still far from bureaucratic ossi.cation-was appraising its past as freely as it prepared its future, one of the older Bolsheviks, Olminsky, who had played a leading part in the party press in all stages of its development, raised the question: How explain the fact that the February revolution found the party on the opportunist path, and what permitted it thereafter to turn so sharply to the path of October ? The author correctly found the source of the party's going astray in March in the fact that it held on too long to the "democratic dictatorship." "The coming revolution must be only a bourgeois revolution. . . . That was," says Olminsky, "an obligatory premise for every member of the party, the of.cial opinion of the party, its continual and unchanging slogan right up to the February revolution of 1917, and even some time after." In ill.u.s.tration Olminsky might have referred to the fact that Pravda, even before Stalin and Kamenev-that is under the "left " editorship, which included Olminsky himself declared on March 7, as though mentioning something that goes without saying: "Of course there is no question among us of the downfall of the rule of capital, but only of the downfall of the rule of autocracy and feudalism." From this too short aim resulted the March captivity of the party to the bourgeois democracy." Whence then the October revolution ' asks the same author. "How did it happen that the party, from its leaders to its rank-and-.le members, so suddenly renounced everything that it had regarded as .xed truth for almost two decades'

Sukhanov, speaking as an enemy, raises the question differently. "How did Lenin man-age to outwit and conquer his Bolsheviks' It is true that Lenin's victory within the party was not only complete, but was won in a very short time. The party enemies indulged on this theme in a good deal of irony as to the personal rgime in the Bolshevik Party. Sukhanov himself answers the question he had raised wholly in the heroic spirit: "Lenin, the genius, was a historic authority -that is one side of it. The other is that there was n.o.body and noth-ing in the party besides Lenin. A few great generals without Lenin amounted to as little as a few gigantic planets without the sun (I here omit Trotsky who was not then within the ranks of the Order)." These curious lines attempt to explain the in.uence of Lenin by his in.u-entialness, as the capacity of opium to produce sleep is explained by its sopori.c powers. Such an explanation does not, of course, get us forward very far. Lenin's actual in.uence in the party was indubitably very great, but it was by no means unlimited. It was still subject to appeal even later, after October, when his authority had grown extraordinarily because the party had measured his power with the yardstick of world events. So much the more in-suf.cient are these mere personal references to his authority in April 1917, when the whole ruling group of the party had already taken up a position contradictory to that of Lenin.

Olminsky comes much nearer to answering the question when he argues that, in spite of its formula of bourgeois democratic revolution, the party had in its whole policy toward the bourgeoisie and the democracy, been for a long time actually preparing to lead the proletariat in a direct struggle for power. "We (or at least many of us)" -says Olminsky-"were unconsciously steering a course toward proletarian revolution, although thinking we were steering a course toward a bourgeois democratic revolution. In other words we were preparing the October revolution while thinking we were preparing the February." An extremely valuable generalization, and at the same time the testimony of an irreproachable witness!

In the theoretical education of the revolutionary party there had been an element of contradiction, which had found its expression in the equivocal formula "democratic dicta-torship" of the proletariat and peasantry. Speaking on the report of Lenin to the conference, a woman delegate expressed the thought of Olminsky still more simply: "The prognosis made by the Bolsheviks proved wrong, but their tactics were right. "

In his April theses which seemed so paradoxical, Lenin was relying against the old for-mula upon the living tradition of the party-its irreconcilable att.i.tude to the ruling cla.s.ses and its hostility to all half-way measures-whereas the "old Bolsheviks" were opposing a still fresh although already outdated memory to the concrete development of the cla.s.s struggle. But Lenin had a too strong support prepared by the whole historic struggle of the Bolshe-viks against the Mensheviks. Here it is suitable to remember that the of.cial Social Demo-cratic programme was still at that time common to the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, that the practical tasks of the democratic revolution looked the same on paper to both parties. But they were by no means so in action. The worker-Bolsheviks immediately after the rev-olution took the initiative in the struggle for the eight hour day; the Mensheviks declared this demand untimely. The Bolsheviks took the lead in arresting the czarist of.cials; the Mensheviks opposed "excesses." The Bolsheviks energetically undertook the creation of a workers' militia; the Mensheviks delayed the arming of the workers, not wishing to quarrel with the bourgeoisie. Although not yet overstepping the bounds of bourgeois democracy, the Bolsheviks acted, or strove to act however confused by their leadership-like uncom-promising revolutionists. The Mensheviks sacri.ced their democratic programme at every step in the interests of a coalition with the liberals. In the complete absence of democratic allies, Kamenev and Stalin inevitably hung in the air.

This April con.ict between Lenin and the general staff of the party was not the only one of its kind. Throughout the whole history of Bolshevism, with the exception of some episodes which in essence only con.rm the rule, all the leaders of the party at all the most important moments stood to the right of Lenin. This was not an accident. Lenin became the unquali.ed leader of the most revolutionary party in the world's history, because his thought and will were really equal to the demands of the gigantic revolutionary possibilities of the country and the epoch. Others fell short by an inch or two, and often more.

Almost the whole ruling circle of the Bolshevik Party for months and even years before the revolution had been outside the active work. Many had carried away into jails and exile the oppressive recollections of the .rst months of the war, and had lived through the wreck of the International in solitude or in small groups. Although in the ranks of the party they had manifested a suf.cient receptivity to those thoughts of revolution which had attracted them to Bolshevism, in isolation they were not strong enough to resist the pressure of the surrounding milieu and make an independent Marxist appraisal of events. The enormous shift of opinion in the ma.s.ses during the two and a half years of war had remained almost outside their .eld of vision. Nevertheless the revolution had not only dragged them out of their isolation, but immediately placed them, thanks to their prestige, in a commanding position in the party. They were often much closer in mood to the "Zimmerwald" intelli-gentsia than to the revolutionary workers in the factories.

The "Old Bolsheviks"-who pretentiously emphasised this appellation in April 1917-were condemned to defeat because they were defending exactly that element of the party tradition which had not pa.s.sed the historic test. "I belong to the old Bolshevik Leninists," said Kalinin, for instance, at the Petrograd conference of April 14, "and I consider that the old Leninism has not by any means proved good-for-nothing in the present peculiar moment, and I am astonished at the declaration of Comrade Lenin that the old Bolsheviks have become an obstacle at the present moment." Lenin had to listen to many such offended voices in those days. However, in breaking with the traditional formula of the party, Lenin did not in the least cease to be a "Leninist." He threw off the worn-out sh.e.l.l of Bolshevism in order to summon its nucleus to a new life.

Against the old Bolsheviks Lenin found support in another layer of the party already tempered, but more fresh and more closely united with the ma.s.ses. In the February rev-olution, as we know, the worker-Bolsheviks played the decisive role. They thought it self-evident that that cla.s.s which had won the victory should seize the power. These same workers protested stormily against the course of Kamenev and Stalin, and the Vyborg dis-trict even threatened the "leaders" with expulsion from the party. The same thing was to be observed in the provinces. Almost everywhere there were left Bolsheviks accused of maximalism, even of anarchism. These worker-revolutionists only lacked the theoretical resources to defend their position. But they were ready to respond to the .rst clear call. It was on this stratum of workers, decisively risen to their feet during the upward years of 1912-14, that Lenin was now banking. Already at the beginning of the war, when the government dealt the party a heavy blow by arresting the Bolshevik faction of the Duma, Lenin, speaking of the further revolutionary work, had demanded the education by the party of "thousands of cla.s.s conscious workers, from among whom in spite of all dif.culties a new staff of leaders will arise."

Although separated from these workers by two war fronts, and almost without commu-nication, Lenin had never lost touch with them. "Let the war, jails, Siberia, hard labour, shatter them twice, ten times, you cannot destroy that stratum. It is alive. It is imbued with revolutionism and anti-chauvinism."

In his mind Lenin had been living through the events along ,with these worker-Bolsheviks, making with them the necessary inferences-only broader and more boldly than they. In his struggle with the indecisiveness of the staff and the broad of.cer layer of the party, Lenin con.dently relied on its under-of.cer layer which better re.ected the rank-and-.le worker-Bolshevik.

The temporary strength of the social-patriots, and the hidden weakness of the oppor-tunist wing of the Bolsheviks, lay in the fact that the former were basing themselves on the temporary prejudices and illusions of the ma.s.ses, and the latter were conforming them-selves to these temporary prejudices and illusions. The chief strength of Lenin lay in his understanding the inner logic of the movement, and guiding his policy by it. He did not impose his plan on the ma.s.ses; he helped the ma.s.ses to recognize their own plan. When Lenin reduced all the problems of the revolution to one-"patiently explain"-that meant it was necessary to bring the consciousness of the ma.s.ses into correspondence with that situation into which the historic process had driven them. The worker or the soldier, dis-appointed with the policy of the Compromisers, had to be brought over to the position of Lenin and not left lingering in the intermediate stage of Kamenev and Stalin.

Once the Leninist formulas were issued, they shed a new light for the Bolsheviks upon the experience of the past months and of every new day. In the broad party ma.s.s a quick differentiation took place-leftward and leftward,-toward the theses of Lenin. District after district adhered to them," says Zalezhsky, and by the time of the all-Russian party confer-ence on April 24, the Petersburg organization as a whole was in favour of the theses".

The struggle for the re-arming of the Bolshevik ranks, begun on the evening of April 3, was essentially .nished by the end of the month. The party conference, which met in Petrograd April 24-29, cast the balance of March, a month of opportunist vacillations, and of April, a month of sharp crisis. By that time the party had grown greatly, both quanti-tatively and in a political sense. The 149 delegates represented 79,000 party members, of whom 15,000 lived in Petrograd. For a party that had been illegal yesterday, and was to-day anti-patriotic, that was an impressive number, and Lenin several times called attention to it with satisfaction. The political physiognomy of the conference was immediately de.ned by the election of a prsidium of .ve members. It did not include either Kamenev or Stalin, the chief culprits March misfortune.

Although for the party as a whole the debated questions were already .rmly decided, many of the leaders, still clinging to the past, continued at this conference in opposition, or semi-opposition, to Lenin. Stalin remained silent and waited. Dzerzhinsky, in the name of "many," who "did not agree in principle with the theses of the spokesman," demanded that a dissenting report be heard from "the comrades who have along with us experienced the revolution in a practical way." This was an evident thrust at the emigrant character of the Leninist theses. Kamenev did actually make a dissenting report in defence of the bourgeois democratic dictatorship. Rykov, Tomsky, Kalinin, tried to stand more or less by their March positions. Kalinin continued to advocate a coalition with the Mensheviks in the interests of the struggle with liberalism. The prominent Moscow party worker, Smidovich, hotly complained in his speech that "every time we speak they raise against us a certain bogey in the form of the theses of Comrade Lenin." Earlier, when the Moscow members were voting for the resolutions of the Mensheviks, life had been a good deal more peaceful.

As a pupil of Rosa Luxemburg, Dzerzhinsky spoke against the right of nations to self-determination, accusing Lenin of protecting a separatist tendencies which weakened the Russian proletariat. To Lenin's answering accusation of giving support to Great-Russian chauvinism, Dzerzhinsky answered: "I can reproach him (Lenin) with standing at the point of view of the Polish, Ukrainian and other chauvinists." This dialogue is not without a po-litical piquancy: the Great-Russian Lenin accuses the Pole, Dzerzhinsky, of Great-Russian chauvinism directed the Poles, and is accused by the latter of Polish chauvinism. Politi-cally Lenin was in the right in this quarrel. His policy on nationalities entered as a most important const.i.tuent element into the October revolution.

The opposition was obviously on the wane. It did not muster more than seven votes on the questions under debate. There was, however, one curious and sharp exception, touching the international relations of the party. At the very end of the conference, in the evening session of April 29, Zinoviev introduced in the name of his commission a resolution To take part in the international conference of Zimmerwaldists designated for May 18 (at Stockholm). "The report says: " Adopted by all votes against one." That one was Lenin. He demanded a break with Zimmerwald, where the majority had been decisively with the German Independents and neutral paci.sts of the type of the Swiss, Grimm. But for the Russian circles of the party, Zimmerwald had during the war become almost identi.ed with Bolshevism. The delegates were not yet ready to give up the name of Social Democrat or break with Zimmerwald, which remained moreover in their eyes a bond with the ma.s.ses of the Second International.

Lenin tried at least to limit partic.i.p.ation in the coming conference to an attendance for informational purposes. Zinoviev spoke against him. Lenin's proposal was rejected. He then voted against the resolution as a whole. n.o.body supported him. That was the last splash of the "March" tendency a clinging to yesterday's position, a fear of "isolation." The Stockholm Conference, however, was never held-a result of those same inner diseases of Zimmerwald, which had led Lenin, to break with it. His unanimously rejected policy of boycott was thus realised in fact.

The abruptness of the turn in the policy of the party was obvious to all. Schmidt, a worker-Bolshevik, afterward People's Commissar of Labour, said at the April conference: "Lenin gave a different direction to the character of the work." According to Raskolnikov-writing, to be sure, several years later-Lenin in April 1917 "carried out an October revo-lution in the consciousness of the party leaders.... The tactic of our party is not a single straight line, but makes after the arrival of Lenin a sharp jump to the left." The old Bol-shevik, Ludmila Stahl, more directly and also more accurately appraised the change. "All the comrades before the arrival of Lenin were wandering in the dark," she said, at the city conference on the 14th of April. "We know only the formulas of 1905. Seeing the inde-pendent creative work of the people, we could not teach them. ... Our comrades could only limit themselves to getting ready for the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly by parliamentary means, and took no account of the possibility of going farther. In accepting the slogans of Lenin we are now doing what life itself suggests to us. We need not fear the Commune, and say that we already have a workers' government; the Commune of Paris was not only a work-ers', but also a petty bourgeois government." It is possible to agree with Sukhanov that the re-arming of the army "was the chief and fundamental victory of Lenin completed by the .rst days of May." Sukhanov, it is true thought that Lenin in this operation subst.i.tuted an anarchist for a Marxist weapon.

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

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

CHAPTER 17.

THE "APRIL DAYS".

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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