YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY i. - - •r.;-~-- Hi v.-v:-.r ,-.%^|i»i**' ^SR-UssidME-iTOtataott^Gommitteefi^^ , to//i/p-D , wm^SiMl ¦&f .i© '' Spirit SS^i; -*- ' £ i-1 USSU1I1 '-* V: •-' •-' &MHHM . i > ¦ :ax; a.i" *3M$>. *¦ , * . - - ^v.; S54?S 'm 7^ * 1 f'- ?^.44"*^'- ¦#«!^i^^^»s IJliXPErjc® ' - * < ' ) ~ rr - - - - */« A\>«»rf Table, a Quart; ¦ - : ^V (.if*. he B 1 om ~a al <, s iK' j sed throi * > . ..... Sttp«t;:W;C:4JD'l^^ i "T^fe&r' ** /-^^%#^4fiSf r " . S^^S'M-i ¦¦3f*-s *&$* ...- : . .^-;... '../-• Russian Liberation Committee. The Spirit of the Russian Revolution. By Dr. HAROLD WILLIAMS. 173, FLEET STREET, E.C.4. PRICE SIXPENCE. PREFACE. The following brief survey of the Eussian Eevolution is reprinted from The Round Table, with the kind permission of the editor. It was written last August, three months before the Allied Armies finally broke the power of Germany. A great deal has happened since then in Eussia and elsewhere, but after re-reading the article I have not thought it advisable to make any alterations in the text. My general view of the Eussian Eevolution is unchanged, but the estimate con tained in these pages of the possible effects of the Bolshevist contagion has received from subsequent events a confirmation more startling than I could have imagined. The German danger has been removed for the time being. But the_^oIshevist danger, not clearly recognised in time, has slipped into its place, and" is threatening to render futile all the labours of the Peace Conference. Perhaps in the inscrutable counsels of History it is ordained that all Europe, even after the heavy strain of the war, shall pass through that cruel fiery furnace in which Eussia has been burning. I do not know, and I can still only earnestly hope that my own and other peoples may be spared this terrible ordeal, and that we may find some less destructive method of sweeping away the ancient wrongs of civilisation. Yet as the months pass it becomes more and more difficult to keep that hope strong. It might have been so easy to save Europe just after the Armistice. It might have been so easy to give wise and generous assistance to the great people in the p]ast that had missed its way in the eager search for the light. But nothing, or next to nothing, was done. And while the Peace Con ference deliberated in Paris the Bolshevist contagion has spread through an exhausted and hopeless Europe, the power and prestige of the Allies have steadily dwindled, and in Eussia the Bolsheviks, who in November were themselves antici pating an immediate and ignominious fall, have been free to extend their tyranny, to flout the victorious Allies, to prepare for new conquests, and to compel the Eussian people to drink the cup of suffering to the dregs. The reins of the world's government are slipping from the hands of the victors, and elemental "orces are gathering swiftly for the storm. The fabric of society in Europe is dissolving, and we cannot see as yet how it may be rebuilt. Hate and despair, ruin and starvation constitute the social atmosphere of Central Europe now, and the infection is spreading. For Lenin this is the opportunity for world-revolution, and his agents are every where stirring up the smouldering flame, so successfully has he imposed himself on the weakness of the world, so ostentatiously has he clothed himself in the semblance of sinister power, that the Allied leaders in Paris, losing confi dence, it may be, in their own ability to build up from amid the ruins, have shown an increasing inclination to treat with the agent of destruction. To such a pass have we come ! It is the failure of the Allied leaders to deal wisely and simply with Eussia that is mainly responsible for the present state of affairs. One might be bitter, did not the issues so vastly transcend the capacities and responsibilities of any individuals, however high their position and their former prestige. I sometimes wonder whether the timid and futile fumbling of the Peace Conference with the Eussian problem may not be the sign of some fundamental weakness in our chosen leaders and, therefore, in the very constitution of our society ; and whether this weakness, of which Lenin is so quick to take advantage, may not be the real foe we have to fight. If so we must be /up and doing ; we must fight for a real and purifying liberty ; otherwise Bolshevism will carry our feeble defences and plunge us into an era of destructive civil war that will end in a dreary reaction. A friend wrote me ' lately from Switzerland : " To me the war seems now but a comparatively pleasant overture ; nor even yet has the curtain rung up upon the real drama. I can foresee nothing but the inevitable disintegration of the. present civilisation, followed by the German reorganisation of Europe within five years." And my friend's gloomy prophecy may quite possibly be realised if the peoples do not now find in themselves strength and wisdom to ward off the coming danger. Por I cannot too strongly insist, in the light of the Eussian experience, that Bolshevism is the handmaid of evil reaction ; that it is, indeed, itself a reaction, a relapse from that toil some, liberating achievement which is the essence of true civilisation, into a reign of violence and primitive materialistic impulses. It is the wrong way ; it is the negation of liberty and spiritual endeavour. Hate is its principle, and in theory and practice it destroys the conception of the intrinsic worth of the individual. It is a revolt against the soul of man. That is why Bolshevism and reactionary Prussianism find it possible from time to time cynically to combine their forces. I am aware that much of what I am saying may still seem incredible to many British readers. It has lately become the fashion in some quarters to protest against the imputation of abominable crime to the Bolsheviks, to minimise their atroci ties, and to attribute the sufferings of the Eussian people under their rule to anyone and everyone but the Bolsheviks them selves. Just as President Wilson found it difficult to believe that the Germans cut down fruit trees during their retreat, so a number of people in England, who regard the cause' of humanity as their own particular domain, refuse to believe in Bolshevik atrocities, and protest much more violently against those who describe them than against those who commit them. I will not argue the point. I can only hope that they may not pass through the horrible Eussian experi ence, and that they may continue to enjoy the amenities and the intellectual luxuries of which the pleasant life of England still permits. But there is a danger in this mood, which non-Bolshevik Eussian Socialists realise only too clearly now. It is a weakening of the defences. It is the kind of playful curiosity that leads to toying with a drug that may unawares bring the whole organism into bondage. To play with Bolshevism for internal reasons, to use distant Bolshevism as a weapon against reaction at home, is both short-sightedly selfish and suicidal. Such an attitude is selfish, because it condemns a country remote from us to endure sufferings that we are not prepared to undergo ourselves. It is suicidal, because it facilitates the penetration of Bolshevist influences, idealises a tyranny, and prepares the ground for disturbances that must in the end lead to reaction. I am not speaking of the out-and-out Bolsheviks who may exist in this country. They know what they are doing. I am speaking rather of those Eadicals who defend Bolshevism as long as it is as far away as Eussia is, but raise a cry of alarm when they see it spreading over Europe and approach ing our own shores ; who are always ready to excuse or con done the ruthless terror of the Bolsheviks in Eussia, but display grave uneasiness and a most uncanny prudence when miners or railwaymen threaten a big strike in England. Bolshevism admits of no compromise. Either you are for it or you are against it, and this feeble inconsistency, this facing- both-ways attitude is the kind of thing that betrays countries and peoples both to Bolshevism and to confessed reaction. The peoples who have endured the terrible strain of the war demand and deserve larger scope for free and fresh endeavour : they demand the creation of conditions that will prevent the repetition of this great catastrophe. Eeaction and Bolshevism both produce and defeat each other, lead to a chaotic destruc tion of all human values, and dry up the sources of loviner- kindness. It will be a hard task now to build the new society, to establish the liberty that will not be a delusion and a mockery. Eussia has explored the possibilities cf liberty recklesslv. and in her search has made practical trial of the most advanced theories current in Western society. Her search has led her into a new slavery, and her example is a warning that Bolshevism, which is the extreme application of the materialistic interpretation of history, leads only to material and moral destruction. The only clear way of progress is one that is based on a strong sense of moral values, of the intrinsic worth of the individual. Eussia will gradually come to herself again. Already there are signs that the Bolshevist regime in Eussia is burning itself out. There are many difficulties and dangers ahead, but it may be that the very worst is passing now. Eussia has had little sympathy and support during her time of trial from those whose ally she was in the war, perhaps because the Allied peoples, while still absorbed in the war, were bewildered and intimidated by the spectacle of that vast convulsion in the East. And the Eussian people amid all its other trying experiences has had a disillusioning and saddening experience of the inner nature of international politics. That may be, in a certain sense, to the good if it stimulates self-reliance. Yet, because I have confidence in my own people, and because I have confidence and hope in the Eussian people, I still ardently desire that the two should join hands and find a clear way together into the perilous but fascinating future that awaits us. Harold William s . London, May, 1919. IV THE SPIRIT OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION. By Harold Williams. I. The Eussian Eevolution, one of the consequences of the world-war, is as disturbing in its results as the war itself, and At first sight even more disconcerting. It has an emotional quality distinct from, and yet akin to, that of the war. It brings out with a crashing violence the undertones of the war, undertones that, vaguely heard, awakened obscure hopes and indefinite fears. Playing on that volume of emotion aroused by the war, it has repeatedly changed the incidence of hope and fear, broadened and narrowed perspective, or created a confusion of thought that may or may not be a .preliminary to broader vision. The War and the Eevolution cannot be thought of apart. They are two aspects of the same struggle, which to so many is as much a mental as a .physical struggle. And the apparently extraordinary disparity of these two aspects is a real impediment to a clear perception of the ultimate aims and purpose of the multifarious conflict in which we are engaged. The present phase of the Eussian Eevolution is one of disaster and ruin. It suggests a condemnation, more especi- ] ally since it seemed in its dangerous development to be a / very possible factor of our defeat, of the crushing of our (^jsorely strained hopes. It provokes final and categorical judg ments. Yet even into these bitter judgments doubt creeps, and the suspicion arises, a very well-founded suspicion, that the events of the past year, impressive as they are to the imagination, are still but an episode in a process whose range •escapes calculation. And, indeed, the present phase of the Eussian Eevolution is anything but a fixed state, a final -crystallisation. It is a phase, an episode in the gigantic process -of the reconstruction of Eastern Europe. There has never been a Eevolution like the upheaval that has taken place in Eussia. Analogies drawn from the French) Eevolution explain only secondary characteristics, not the ¦main trend of events. The old regime in Eussia finally fell owing to its incapacity to deal with the complex political problems raised by a modern war. The further course of the Eevolution was determined by the rapid disintegration of a great army. The old regime, indeed, collapsed through its own ineptitude. The test of the war revealed its inherent weakness. The mutiny of the Petrograd garrison was the slight but significant touch that made it topple over in ruin. There is no need either to justify or to condemn the Eevolu tion. The complete and overwhelming condemnation of the old regime is that it collapsed as it did. It fell not through rebellion, not through a frontal attack, but simply because its vitality, its power, its utility, were exhausted. The calamity is not that the old regime fell, but that the Eussian State was so largely identified with the old regime. The autocracy was blind to the future. The order of succes sion to the Crown had drifted into chaos. But a much more important order of succession, that which involved the character of the new regime that must inevitably follow, was left entirely out of account by those who to the very last clung so blindly and desperately to autocratic power. The old regime left hardly any room for the development and trainiug of the forces that must succeed it as a power responsible for the existence of the State. And when the old regime fell under the strain of a great war it involved in its ruin the whole of that political structure over which it had so jealously asserted its monopoly. The ruin was not and cannot be final, because the Eussian State was not wholly identified with .he old regime, still less is it solely the creation of the autocracy. But the Eevolution was so disastrous because in completely liberating all the forces opposed to the old regime it exposed to violent attack all those functions which had been exercised by the autocracy and its agents — that is to say, practically all the principal functions of the State. And this at a time when an aggressive neighbour was directing its efforts to the defeat and destruction of the power of Eussia. II. A brief analysis of events from March, 1917, onwards will make this clearer. The sudden and complete collapse of the old regime was entirely unexpected. There was grave discontent throughout Eussia, but there was no revolutionary organisation worth speaking of. The Duma, which during the preceding months had given strong expression to the growing popular feeling, was intent on the prosecution of the war. It demanded a change of system, but it did not demand, nor did it expect, a catastrophic, revolutionary change. From 1915 onwards it had urged the formation of a "Government enjoying the confidence of the country." Towards the end, particularly during the last three months ofthe old regime, the Duma, or rather the Progressive Bloc of central parties that dominated the Duma, had taken steps to prepare for the introduction of responsible parliamentary government. Further than this the aspirations of the Duma did not go. Now the Duma \ contained the only trained politicians in the country outside ' the Government. And their training was limited, for while tor ten years they had had liberty to discuss legislative measures and thus to gain a practical insight into the struc ture of the State, they had never been allowed to share the responsibility for the execution of these measures. Moreover, most of their proposals for reform had been rejected, and their scathing and trenchant criticism of Government policy had been ignored. The most the leading members of the Duma dared hope for was that they might be granted a share in the responsi bility for the development of the existing structure of the State. They had never seriously faced the possibility that the old regime would suddenly abandon all its functions. They had laid no plans whatever for assuming the whole burden of responsibility. When the Petrograd mutiny broke out they were completely bewildered, and when it became obvious that Nicholas II. must abdicate, they struggled hard to secure a breathing ¦ space by urging that his brother Michael should assume the Eegency. They did not succeed. They could not stem the rising tide. The howls of the Preobra- zhensky soldiers when Miliukov announced to them the Duma Committee's decision to offer the Eegency to Michael Alex- androvich were the first clear warning that the Eevolution was going to take its own fatal way. The responsibility of forming a Provisional Government was thrown on the Duma Committee. But from the very first day it was faced with a rival, reckless, energetic, per fectly sure of its aim. The oppression of the old regime had given rise to an extreme Socialist movement in Eussia. The revolutionary tradition in Eussia is predominantly Socialistic, the reason being that Socialism for the last half-century has been the most advanced political doctrine in Europe. It attracted the imagination because it was proclaimed as the gospel of the oppressed masses, it offered a simplified con ception of history as a struggle of classes, and in Western Europe, from which the Eussian educated class borrowed its political theories, it had become in its Marxian form the accepted dogma of revolutionary mass movements. The Socialist parties had been very prominent in Eussia during the re volution ary movement of 1905. In the subse quent reaction they were severely suppressed : leaders and 3 followers were executed, imprisoned, exiled, or hunted into- banishment abroad. Their organisation was driven under ground, and after about 1908 the remnants of the Socialist parties maintained an obscure and tenuous existence irfi Eussian public life, and exerted little direct influence. In the fourth Duma they were represented by two small groups,. of which one was led by Kerensky, the other by Chheidze. The failure of the first Eevolution and the demolition of the Socialist parties sobered the more moderate, demoralised a great many of the weaker elements, and led to an extraordinary development of that sinister interplay between the Socialist underworld and the underworld of the bureaucracy (the- Okhrana or Secret Police), of which the career of the agent provocateur, Azev, is the most notorious illustration. The collapse of the old regime was the opportunity of the- Socialists. They had not brought about the Eevolution. The Eevolution came of itself. But the Socialists were quick to seize the opportunity. Eestraint was removed. Here were masses waiting to be led. And these experienced agitators leapt into the breach and took the lead. The principal party leaders were not on the spot, but there were hundreds of subordinates who rushed from their obscurity and, intoxi cated by the unlooked-for opportunity, hastened to carry out the cut-and-dried party plans. The Duma Committee for the provisional conduct of affairs was formed on the afternoon of March 12, the day of the outbreak of the mutiny. On the evening of the same day a number of Socialists met in another room of the Taurida Palace and founded the Council of Workmen's Deputies, a kind of local Socialist parliament , which two days later became the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies. This Council included, besides the initiators and prominent members of all the Socialist parties, representatives of the soldiers and work men of Petrograd in the proportion of one to every 1,000 workmen and one soldier to every company. The original Council of Workmen's Deputies was a revolutionary syndi calist organisation that had a brief existence in the autumn of 1905. The great and decisive innovation in March, 1917', was the introduction of soldiers, and that was due to the Bolsheviks, who even then had a perfectly clear conception of their goal. This Council or Soviet was the powerful rival of the Duma Committee. As regiment after regiment filed through the Duma, Socialist agitators vied with members of the Duma for the mastery over the armed crowd. And it very soon became clear that for these masses the Socialistic appeals to class hatred were more effective than the call to patriotic- instincts. The Provisional Government came into being as the result of a fierce struggle, ending in an unsatisfactory com promise between the Liberal and Constitutional Duma Com mittee and the Eevolutionary Socialist Soviet. Kerensky was the mediator between the rival bodies. He was Vice-President of the Soviet, and he became the representative of the Socialist groups in the first Provisional Government. III. The programme of the new Government was the last word in democracy. The Provisional Government was to carry on the administration of the country until the preparations could be completed for convening a Constituent Assembly which should decide the form of government. This Assembly and also the local government bodies were to be elected on a basis of universal adult suffrage and proportional representation. The police were everywhere to be replaced by a militia organised and controlled by the local government bodies. All the liberties were proclaimed. In a word, the programme represented an advanced form of democratic government. There is no doubt that some of the moderate Duma men would have preferred a less precipitate concession of all the imaginable liberties. But they could not help themselves, and in any case no other type of programme was possible in the circumstances. The whole tradition of the Eussian democratic opposition demanded the immediate adoption of a democratic programme at the earliest opportunity. There were two features of the programme, however, that could only be regarded as ominous. They were enforced by the Soviet, and were only yielded by the Duma Committee after a hard struggle. One was the total omission of any declaration of a vigorous war policy. The second was the proviso that the Petrograd garrison should not be sent to the front, but should be kept in Petrograd as the guard of the Eevolution. The abdication of Nicholas II. on March 15 deprived the old regime of its last vestige of moral support. On the follow ing day his brother, the Grand Duke Michael, refused to accept the crown, pending the decision of the Constituent Assembly. Thenceforward the whole responsibility for the government of Eussia and the conduct of the war lay on the newly-formed Provisional Government. Now before proceeding to trace the further course of the Eevolution it is necessary to make certain reservations. The disasters that followed might have been foreseen, and indeed by shrewder politicians were foreseen, but that by no means implies -that they could have been avoided. It must be remembered that the Eussian Eevolution was in the most real sense a Eevolution, that it involved the complete collapse of an oppressive system of absolute government over a huge area, that over this huge area no new forms of administra tion were in readiness to take the place of the old, that__the -Eevolution took the leaders of all parties unawares, and that the new orgamsation*Thlidto be improvised on the spur of the moment in accordance with the theories of government that had been advocated for years by the democratic Opposition. Further, it must be remembered that the traditional political structure of Eussia collapsed in the midst of the greatest war Eussia had ever waged, and that this seemingly imposing and menacing fabric toppled over in a moment as the result of a mutiny of private soldiers. It is perfectly obvious that such a sudden release of elemental forces from age-long control could not in a short space of time be interpreted in rational forms, in a rational political system, that the actions and plans of individuals and parties could not but play a subordinate part as determining factors, and that the scope of that great process of rational unfolding, of national self-determination in the broadest sense, extends far out into the unknown future, and cannot be measured by the values and standards even of this our generation of herculean effort and most turbulent motion. Further, in apportioning praise and blame to the persons and groups who are active in the Eussian Eevolution it must be remembered that none of them really led, none of them really -could lead. All they could do was hastily to devise temporary schemes for the guidance of the extraordinary complex of newly-awakened irrational forces that are groping their way through immense suffering to some new national reason, to some new order of corporate existence. The leaders were profoundly influenced by the contagion of the mass movement. Their theories and methods were strongly coloured by the moods and impulses of the crowd. Their programmes, their cries and watchwords supplied a form of words, a borrowed speech, a pathetically inadequate language for vague find surging emotions that were striving to become articulate. We have heard much of the ideals of the Eussian Eevolution, but we simply do not know what these ideals are. for the watch words imposed by party leaders to-day are obsolete to-morrow. and the vast process of national change in its onward sween leaves behind it a wreckage of words that have lost their emotional content, of programmes that are now but bleaching skeletons of popular passion. IV. To return to the Provisional Government and the Soviet. The Provisional Government bore the responsibility for carry ing on. The Soviet accepted only a very limited responsibility for the support of the Provisional Government. It is clear that the Soviet, or rather the extreme left wing, which in the long run dictated the Soviet's policy, was biding its time. It left the Government to administer the country as best it might, to close the door to reactionary influences, and also to maintain intact all the liberties, so that the ground might be prepared for a social revolution. In the meantime the Soviet proceeded rapidly to organise its forces. The Provisional Government had no strong, separate organisation of its own. The Duma Committee was not capable of multiplication and extension, the Soviet was. The Socialists organised not only their own parties. They everywhere organised Soviets on the lines of the Petrograd Soviets. The only strong non- Socialist party, the Cadets, swiftly and successfully developed their own organisation, but they did not and could not set up anything corresponding to the Soviets. The Soviets were founded on a class basis. The Provisional Government represented no class, but the nation as a whole. But it had no strong representative organisation behind it. The Duma had been elected on a limited franchise, and the great autho rity it had won during the months of suppressed discontent that preceded the Eevolution quickly faded in the democratic atmosphere of the new time. It ceased to sit, most of its members passed into the Administration , and the Duma ! became a shadow, until, during the Kerensky regime, it was j dissolved by the Government under pressure from the Soviets. , The suggestion was sometimes made that the Provisional Government should be supported by a consultative or legisla tive body consisting of the members of all four Dumas, the first two of which were certainly thoroughly democratic. But for some reason this suggestion was never carried into effect. It was only in the twilight of his power that Kerensky con ceived the belated idea of calling together a kind of national representative organ, which he called the Provisional Council of the Eepublic. There were two main elements, then, in the Eevolution — the democratic and the Socialistic. This distinction later acquired supreme importance. The Conservative parties fell into the background and, as an organisation, played no active part. The Provisional Government was in programme and spirit thoroughly democratic. Now it is difficult, in speaking of the Provisional Government and the Soviet, to avoid giving the impression that they were rival bodies of equal status. Formally this was not so. The Government was formed as the result of a compact between the Duma Com mittee and the Soviet, and the Soviet was represented in the Government by the Minister of Justice, Kerensky. But the Soviet showed from the first a strong disposition to exert many of the functions of the Goverment, and it was not long before it claimed the right to exert ' ' control ' ' through its appointed representatives in all the Government departments. There was, in fact, a very marked rivalry, in which the Government, hampered by a sense of national responsibility, was continually worsted by the very impulsive and aggressive Soviet. V. Yet the Provisional Government did at first enjoy enormous prestige which it might have translated into terms of real and effective power. It did not do so. Why? Here is one of the most curious problems of the Eevolution. The Eussian people were willing to be governed, eager to be led and guided. Why did the Provisional Government not guide it to a happier issue? The reason did not lie wholly in the character of the members of the new Government. It is true that the Premier, Prince George Lvov, was a great disappointment. He had gained a high reputation as organiser of the Zemstvo Union, which had done a great deal of auxiliary war work. But as Premier he was singularly colourless and impersonal. He was a non-resister by temperament, a firm believer in the virtue of moral suasion, an interested and optimistic spectator rather than an actor. In Cabinet meetings he was a passive chairman, always anxious to avoid dissension, and the other Ministers used to complain that they never knew his real views on any subject. Of these other Ministers four were Cadets — Miliukov, Shingarev, Manuilov, and Nekrasov; one was a Socialist — Kerensky ; one, Vladimir Lvov, a Nationalist ; two, Guchkov and Godnev, Octobrists ; while Tereshchenko, like the Premier, was non-party, and Konovalov, a Moscow manufacturer, was a Progressist, with leanings to the Left. But the groupings within the Cabinet was not on party lines. There were practically two groups, one led by Kerensky, the other by Miliukov. Kerensky secured the support of Nekrasov, and these two, in cases of dispute, gener ally won to their side the Premier, Tereshchenko , and the Conservatives, while Miliukov was left with Shingarev and Manuilov in the minority. The two chief men in the Govern ment, then, were Miliukov and Kerensky — the one a historian. set, firm, experienced, with matured and informed political convictions , thoroughly versed in international politics ; the 8 other ardent, fluid, mobile, impressionable, with vague emo tions and aspirations as yet imperfectly articulate, with quick intelligence, but no solid foundation of knowledge. It was a remarkable contrast of character, and this contrast of character quickly came to mean a conflict of tendency. Miliukov was for firmness and caution. He considered that the Eevolution had gone far enough for the time being, and that the chief aim of the Government should be to secure what had been gained and to carry on the war with more spirit and energy than the old regime had displayed. Kerensky was for movement. He was absorbed in the Eevolution, very sensitive to the popular mood, and, for a time at least, only vaguely conscious of the immense implications of the war, to i which, under the old regime, he had been coldly indifferent, I if not openly hostile. And by his impetuosity, his alertness, and by the help of that adroit wire-puller, Nekrasov, he suc ceeded in gradually gaining the ascendancy over the stubborn, clear-headed, but not very agile Miliukov. But the rivalry between Miliukov and Kerensky was not purely personal, nor does it in itself explain the lack of firmness, the lack of bold initiative displayed by the Provisional Govern ment. There were deeper reasons. The Government faith fully carried out its democratic programme. It did affirm all i the liberties. It abolished capital punishment, declared the: independence of Poland, restored the constitution of Finland, I established local government on a universal suffrage basis, con ceded language rights to all the nationalities, confirmed liberty of speech, liberty of the Press, liberty of assembly, did, in fact, with most scrupulous fidelity, carry out the letter of its pro gramme. And it did so not merely because it was bound by a pledge, but because its members were filled with a genuine enthusiasm for liberty. They rejoiced in the general joy, and if some of them perceived the difficulties and dangers, they retained for a long time the conviction that liberty was in itself a cure for all ills of the body politic, past, present and to come. Tbat was the attitude of Miliukov. That was the attitude of nearly all the members' of the Provisional Government. They and the men around them represented the most mature political wisdom of the nation. But they had spent their lives in opposition to an oppressive regime, and liberty was to them as the breath of their nostrils. They exulted in the oppor tunity of affirming it, and most of them believed in the intuitive wisdom of the people as firmly as any revolutionary Socialist. But, and this is the essential point, the faithful execution of this broad programme of liberty rendered the Government in a curious sense passive, and undermined its authority. The first Provisional Government was dominated by the will to release rather than by the will to govern. It enjoyed for a time greajfc authority, in the first place because it was a Govern ment. The Eussian people was accustomed to be ruled, and the Provisional Government inherited what was left of the authority of the Governments that had preceded it. Further, this authority was greatly reinforced by the fact that the new Government was a revolutionary Government and its leading members had long been known as champions of liberty. It wielded authority in virtue of its moral prestige, which was its greatest asset. If the Eevolution had not taken place in time pf war this moral prestige would have sufficed to carry the Provisional Government safely through the period requisite for convening the Constituent Assembly. But the circumstances of the time demanded of the Govern ment an active policy for the translation of moral prestige into continuous and effective authority. Yet this is just what the Provisional Government was debarred from doing, on account of the temperament of its members, the spirit of the time, its declared programme, and the conditions of its origin. It would not and could not apply coercion, or if it did applied it only with great reluctance, and then almost exclusively to representatives of the old regime. Any attempt to employ coercion in relation to those who , in the name of the Eevolution itself, from the first tried to undermine the Government's authority, would have been decried as a symptom of reaction, and would indeed have been repugnant to the sentiments of most of the members of the Government. The principle of Government coercion had been discredited by the excesses of the old regime, just as the idea of the State had been obscured in the minds of the people by its identification with a crush ing tyranny. 'You don't know how to be a Government," said Kerensky to other "Ministers who were temperamentally incapable of any personal assertion of their exalted position. And he himself later tried to affirm in sonorous and menacing phrases that asset of moral prestige which the Government actually possessed, but which during his regime it was already rapidly losing. Yet Kerensky was more violently than anyone opposed to the employment of coercion. This point must be emphasised because it is of the highest importance in view of all that followed. Here on the one side was a Coalition Government, endowed with responsibility and. at first, with real authority, but lacking any strong organisation of its own and deprived by its own policy and its own tempera - ment of the means of enforcing and extending its authority. And on the other side was the Soviet perpetually suspicious, active, aggressive, unceremonious, keeping the Government to the letter of its compact, agitating among the masses, and in particular strengthening its own position enormously by agitat ing among the armed masses of soldiers and so securing a 1(1 monopoly over the chief instrument of coercion, and in addition most persistently and energetically developing its peculiar organisation throughout the country. And the power that the Soviets so rapidly acquired over the masses was used as a means of forcing the Government to concession after reluctant concession. VI. It is worth while to look more closely into the nature and policy of the Soviets. The Soviets were a kind of class parlia ment formed by the Socialist parties. Eussian Socialism is rather a labyrinth, but broadly speaking there were two main types of Socialists — the Social Democrats, who were Marxians, and the Socialist Eevolutionaries , who had a Marxian pro gramme for the workmen, and a non-Marxian programme of, land socialisation for the peasantry. But each of these parties ' was subdivided into several groups. The Social Democrats were divided into Mensheviks, who, generally speaking, may be described as evolutionary Socialists of a "Revisionist type, and Bolsheviks, or extreme Eevolutionary Socialists, whose aim was to establish by force the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Social Eevolutionaries, again, were divided into several factions, the more moderate of which resembled the Men sheviks, while the extremists resembled the Bolsheviks. These sub-divisions were further complicated and multiplied through differences of opinion about the war. There were ' ' def encist ' ' and ' ' defeatist ' ' Mensheviks , and ' ' def encist ' ' and " defeatist " Social Eevolutionaries. The extreme wings of both groups were violently defeatist. Moreover, it must be remem bered, in estimating the mental attitude of the Socialist parties, that while the Cadets and the other Liberals drew the inspira tion for their constitutional and democratic ideals from Eng land, the Socialist leaders drew their inspiration from German Social Democracy. They were soaked in German Social Demo cratic literature and many of them had spent years in Germany or in close association with their German comrades. This fact by no means necessarily implied sympathy with German war aims, but it did imply on the part of most Eussian Socialists a particular sensitiveness to the German mental atmosphere and a corresponding lack of sympathy for the English spirit. And in relation to the world war this was a significant circumstance. For the war was, in fact, the question on which the whole development of the Eevolution turned. The Eevolution was not in its origin a social revolution. It only became so much later. It began as a mutiny. It was as great a surprise to the Socialists as to anybody else. They were quick in assuming the 11 proprietorship, in claiming, so to speak, the copyright. But that does not alter the fact that the Eevolution began as a spontaneous movement directly provoked by the suicidal in eptitude of the old regime. What the Socialists did was to turn the Eevolution to account for their own purposes, to im pose upon the chaotic popular movement their own aims, their own ideals. But the agents of the Eevolution were not the proletariat in the strict sense. They were soldiers, able-bodied men armed for the defence of their country. In Eussia the soldiers were, in the bulk, either peasants (the large majority) or workmen. But these were just the classes the two chief Socialist parties, the Social Eevolutionaries and Social Demo crats, had been trying to get into movement for years. And here they were under arms, and the soldiers of Petrograd had of their own will mutinied and overthrown the Government. What could be more tempting for ardent Socialists than the idea of securing control of an army that had demonstrated such remarkable capacities, and making it the instrument not merely of a political but of a social revolution? The opportunity was there. Liberty of action was secured. The Provisional Govern ment, which might be supposed to object to such dangerous use being made of the army, was bound by its compact not to inter fere with agitation, and was in any case intimidated by the first effects of violent Socialist agitation among the Petrograd regiments who were brought one after the other into the Duma during those exciting days when the new Government was being formed. A campaign of class war among the armed peasants and workmen — that, stripped of all ambiguities, was the task the Socialists set before them. This must be stated cleaijly, because it was this definite and passionate purpose that led in the end to the break-up of the army and the establishment of the Bol shevik regime. It would be absurd to suppose that all the Socialist intellectuals who took part in the Soviet realised this purpose from the first. Many were simply carried away by the gregarious imperative of party feeling, by the inertia of their own past, by the intoxication of the mass movement. Then there were cool evolutionary Socialists who saw that the conditions were not ripe for the triumph of Socialism, that a premature and superficial success gained by wielding unedu cated, untrained masses might ruin the Socialist cause, and they therefore counselled moderation. And there was a minority of " def encist " Socialists who perceived the danger of an agitation that by disorganising the army might expose the country to a catastrophic defeat. But in an unrestrained mass movement the extremists have a great advantage. They are the most reckless, unscrupulous and destructive in their methods. They can make the most 12 forcible appeal to the coarser instincts of the mob. And, in particular, the Socialist extremists in Eussia were most skilful m combining the presentation of a clear-cut, simplified Socialist ideal with a very powerful appeal to the impulses of suspicion and hate. These extremists were Bolshevik?. Their aim was clear, their purpose definite, they knew from the beginning what they wanted. The other Socialists were in a state of mental confusion. They knew perfectly well that it would be madness to go as far and as fast as the extremists wished. But they had not the courage of this particular conviction. They were Socialists. They professed adherence to the essentials of the extremists' creed. They were working on the same material. They had to maintain a clear distinction between their own aims and the aims of that indeterminate body known as the bourgeoisie. To secure control over the masses they had to foment class feeling, to attack the bourgeoisie, to discredit the aims and motives of the moderate parties of the Eevolution. But then the extremists could do that so much more effectively. And there arose a competition in demagogy. To control the crowd, even to restrain the crowd, the Mensheviks and Social Eevolutionaries had to pretend that their aims and attitude hardly differed from those of the Bol sheviks. And often it was not only pretence, not only the mere doping of the crowd which the devotees of mass-suggestion con sider to be one of the essentials of politics. The difference between the more moderate Socialists and the Bolsheviks was not a difference of creed. They all at bottom confessed the same faith, they all used the same language. The difference was one of methods, of pace, of speed, and when in the heated atmosphere of endless meetings in streets, factories, barracks, halls and camps the masses became responsive to demands that rapidly grew more extreme, many of the more moderate Socialists reconsidered their views as to the speed the Eevolu tion might assume. They were carried away by their own demagogy, by the response of the masses, and by the incessant push and urge of the Bolsheviks. They said many extravagant things of which they afterwards bitterly repented. After all, they were inexperienced, worse than inexperienced, in State affairs. They had a pretty thorough knowledge of conspirative politics, many of them were extraordinarily well versed in the intricacies of revolutionary theory. But imagine these men and women flocking back to Petrograd from remote prisons, from dreary and colourless Siberian exile, or frorn interminable all-night debates in the back-streets of Geneva, and suddenly finding those " masses " of which they had dreamed armed and waiting on their words. This experience was certainly not conducive to steadiness of outlook. And remember, too, that among these returned revolutionaries there were not a few who 13 through disappointment, privation, inherent weakness,, or the blighting effect of their own theories, had lost their personal honesty, had accepted as a reward for the betrayal of their comrades a miserable pittance from the Secret Police, or had acted as German agents during the war. The policy of the Soviets was throughout a policy of latent or active Bolshevism. Not that Gotz, Lieber, Dahn, Tsereteli and the other moderate Socialists who for several months led the Soviet realised or desired this. When they awoke to the Bolshevik danger they tried hard to prevent this extreme and ruinous development of the Eevolution. They acted as brakes and buffers, but the Bolshevik spirit was the real driving force. At first the Bolsheviks were in a very small minority, and they had to act indirectly, either by egging on muddle-headed moderates to proclaim their creed, or by pricking the Soviet into some compromising course of action that for fear of the crowd it dared not afterwards repudiate. But it was the war, the dominating fact of the war, that gave the Bolsheviks their chief power. They quickly perceived that their best weapon was the disorganisation of the army. And in this policy the Soviet played readily into their hands. for the simple reason that the majority of the Soviet leaders were " defeatists," or, if not defeatist, so tepidly, so timidly, so conditionally pro-war, that their " defencism " was defence less against the unrelenting aggressiveness of the ardent advo cates of immediate peace. And so it came about that the history of the eight months during which Eussia was ruled by the Provisional Government was the history of the steady and systematic disorganisation of the army. Of course, the Germans stimulated this process in every possible way, and ^scattered their money and their secret agents all over Eussia. But the process was possible because Eussian Socialists laboured under the incredible delusion, the rank heresy from the Marxian point of view, that the disorganisation of a great peasant army, the exposure of their country to a ruthless enemy, was the equivalent of the social revolution of which they had dreamed. To such disasters led the infatuation of men whose natural faculties had been starved in the underworld of Tsarism. Their action could only be destructive, for they had lived so long amid bitter abstractions and negations. VII. The disorganisation of the army, then, determined the course of the Eevolution. By March, 1917, the great majority of the able-bodied men of Eussia had been called to the colours. The losses during the war had been very heavy, but a large army 14 with strong reserves was preparing actively for the spring offen sive. Never had the Eusian army been so well supplied with munitions as at that moment, and the commanders were con fident of being able to deal the enemy a heavy blow in conjunc tion with the Allies. That blow was stayed by the Eevolution. There was no intrinsic reason why it should not have been delivered soon after the Provisional Government was estab lished. It could not be delivered because propaganda was already at work, and affecting the army. On Thursday, March 3, a leaflet was issued by the newly- formed Soviet with the heading " Order No. 1." This order was the source of all the trouble that followed. In peremptory terms it called on the soldiers to cease saluting their officers, the titles by which officers were addressed were declared abolished, officers were reduced to the position of technical experts on the actual conduct of battle, while all other affairs of each unit were to be managed by committees of soldiers. The whole aim of the ' ' order ' ' was completely to undermine military discipline and to make the officers suspects in the eyes of the soldiers. True, the disciplinary regulations under the old regime had been excessively severe, and gave officers sufficient opportunity for bullying, if they were so disposed. But in the course of the war these rules had not been administered with abnormal rigour, and in thousands of cases officers and men were on excellent terms. " Order No. 1 " struck a severe blow at the organisation of the army , and aroused a storm of indigna tion among the pro-war elements, on account both of its con tents and of the unlawful and barefaced attempt by the Soviet to assume authority over the Army. In the face of this storm the Soviet drew back a little, and its leaders lamely protested that it was intended to apply only to the Petrograd garrison. But in the meantime copies of the document had been despatched in large quantities to the front. The mischief was done. The poison had begun to work. It is worth noting that the men who drafted this order, Nahamkis (Steklov) and a lawyer named Sokolov, at that time described themselves as Bolsheviks. Two months later Sokolov recovered his senses and went to the front to preach def encist doctrines to the troops. While doing so he was beaten within an inch of his life by soldiers who had become very thoroughly imbued with the spirit of " Order No. 1." The next step was to undertake a peace agitation. The ideas which animated the Soviet were formulated, now vaguely and cautiously, now with bitter emphasis, in a long series of speeches, articles, resolutions, and official manifestos. These ideals were first proclaimed as a Socialist policy in relation to the world-war at an International Socialist Conference held at Zimmerwald, in Switzerland, in September, 1915, with the 15 Swiss Socialist, Eobert Grimm, in the chair, and Lenin, Zinoviev, Eadek, Ganetsky, Chernov, and several French, Italian, and Swiss Socialists among its members. The Zim- merwald theory was that the war was simply a conflict between the capitalists and imperialists of the chief belligerent countries, that the big financiers had sent the proletariat to slaughter in order to grab territory and still further to enrich themselves, that Germany was not specially to blame for the war, no more to blame, at any rate, than England, and that the only way to end the war was for the proletariat of all lands to rise and overthrow its exploiters. In other words, revolution was to be the substitute for war. The Petrograd Soviet did not adopt the Zimmerwald inter pretation in toto. But it did adopt the Zimmerwald formula, ' ' peace without annexations and indemnities on the basis of the self-determination of the peoples." For the moment the Soviet, relying on the powerful influence of the Eussian Eevolu tion , was content to use this formula as an instrument of moral suasion in the belligerent countries , not as a weapon of coercion against its own Government. The trouble was that the Bol shevik ferment was working, and the Soviet could not con sistently adhere to the middle line it had chosen. Its tepid defencism was continually being overborne by the rabid defeatism of the Bolshevik minority. Its tactics in relation to the army, its assertion of the principles of political agitation: within the army, drove the Soviet into a position diametrically opposed to that of the active and convinced supporters of the war. No phrases about "the resolute determination of the Eussian proletariat not to allow its new-won liberties to be trampled on by the imperialists of any country ' ' could disguise the fact that the whole policy of the Soviet was undermining that spirit, that discipline without which national defence is impossible. To the agitation against the officers succeeded agitation against the generals. Some warning words of General Alexeiev's on the danger of the decline in discipline aroused a violent protest in the Soviet. Nahamkis declared in the Soviet on March 27 , " The former Headquarters of the Tsar at Mogilev has now become a centre of counter-revolution. Mutinous generals , refusing to submit to the will of the Eussian people, are carrying on a counter-agitation among the soldiers. We have demanded of the Provisional Government that it should outlaw these mutinous generals who sacrilegiously dare to raise their miserable hands against the Eevolution. No officer, no soldier must obey him, but every officer, every soldier, every citizen has the right and duty to kill him before he raises his hand." This was not an official declaration, but it was the kind of thing that was said in the presence of the 16 soldiers of the Petrograd garrison, and was shouted thousands of times over in depots and regiments of the line throughout Eussia. Is it any wonder that the discipline of the troops ! gradually gave way, that the army ceased to fight? It is necessary to dwell on this particular aspect of Soviet and Socialist agitation, because it was decisive. It was the existence of undisciplined armed masses that made all kinds of social experiments possible, that stimulated the workmen to demonstrate, to strike, to advance demands they would other wise hardly have dreamed of making, that aroused the peasants from their apathy, and aggravated their desire for the land. The driving power of the Eevolution was a great army, loosed from its normal allegiance, diverted from the military object from which it was brought into being, and made to serve as the instrument of a form of civil coercion that ultimately developed into open civil war. ' ' The front must be brought into the interior of the country," cried one excited Social Eevolutionary. The first all-Eussian Soviet Congress, held in June, in drafting the appeal for the International Socialist Conference, insisted on the necessity for a breach of the party truce with the bel ligerent countries, and on an onslaught by the proletariat of all lands on their Governments with the object of bringing about the cessation of the war. The moderate Socialists who then controlled the Soviet only vaguely realised what this meant. But the Bolsheviks knew, without a shadow of doubt, and con sciously worked for the substitution of civil war for war between the nations from the very beginning of the Eevolution, until in Eussia they finally succeeded. VIII. It is impossible here to give a detailed account of the Eevolu tion, to dwell on the vacillations of the Soviets, on their changing relation with the Government, on the recoil of their leaders when they began to realise the consequences of their own precipitate action and the growing danger of the Bolshevik movement. One or two significant facts may be noted. The first is the receptions accorded respectively to Lenin and Plehanov. Plehanov was the founder of the Eussian Social Democratic Party and it chief theorist. He had led the Men sheviks in the split with the Bolsheviks who had followed Lenin ; and from that time on Lenin and Plehanov had been the protagonists of rival factions among the revolutionaries in France and Switzerland. At the beginning of the war Plehanov took up a strong def encist, a patriotic position. Lenin declared himself an internationalist and defeatist, and took a prominent part in the conference at Zimmerwald. When 17 Plehanov returned from exile he was welcomed at the Finland station with bands and speeches and cheering crowds. But in the Soviet he not only had a cold reception, but he was not even admitted as a member of the Soviet, though the custom was that the veriest underlings of the Socialist parties became members of the Soviet almost as a matter of course, im mediately after their return from exile. Lenin, when he returned with his party through Germany a fortnight later, was also received at the station wifh jubilation, and although his first speech in the Soviet was met with jeers and regarded as the raving of a madman, he was made a member of the Soviet, and took part in its deliberations until the July insur rection. And the reason for this marked distinction was not so much the fact that the Soviet leaders were at best only feeble defencists, as simple fear of the crowd. The soldier masses, excited by the perpetual agitation for peace ' ' without annexa tions and indemnities," a formula which being unintelligible was therefore sacrosanct, and at any rate meant that they were to engage in the cheerful game of politics instead of fighting, were wholly indisposed to listen even to the greatest Socialist leaders if these insisted on the primary necessity of carrying on the war with vigour. Lenin was a queer fellow. but at any rate he was for stopping the war at once. And so the Soviet leaders, cringing to their source of power as courtiers cringed to the Tsar, treated their own leader and teacher as an outcast, and admitted to their midst a man who despised their pusillanimity. Equally characteristic was the Soviet's reception of the French and British Labour leaders. The coldness of this reception bordered on hostility, simply because the Allied Socialists urged a vigorous prosecution of the war for the defence of democracy and the protection of the Eussian Eevolu tion itself. On the other hand, the Swiss Socialist Eobert Grimm, the President of the Zimmerwald Conference, who was ultimately expelled from Eussia by the Provisional Government for his proved relations with the German Government, and an Austrian prisoner of war, the Socialist writer, Otto Bauer, were treated in the Petrograd Soviet as intimate friends and com rades. And yet if a word must be chosen to condemn this attitude, it was not intentionally treasonable, it was childish. In theory the Mensheviks and Social Eevolutionaries who led the Soviet were not necessarily anti-patriotic, but even when they found themselves in a responsible position they could not subordinate to the stern exigencies of the war the theoretical and personal sympathies they had developed during years of debate in revolutionary coteries abroad. The atmosphere of their doctrine was Central European. 18 IX. In the life of the Provisional Government there were four phases, each of which lasted about two months and terminated in an emeute. For the first four months Prince Lvov was Premier, for the second four months Kerensky. Each crisis was in essence a military crisis — that is to say, the real deter mining cause was the disorganisation of the army , the struggle over the burning question of war and peace. And here it must again be emphasised that although German agents undoubtedly exploited Eussian disorganisation, though they helped with money, and though their hand is visible in the curiously un- Eussian system and method by which the breakdown of the army was effected, yet the process was not in itself a result of German action, but of the history, the political structure, the social conditions of the peoples assembled on the great Eurasian plain. The first crisis occurred early in May. The Government was trying to maintain a vigorous war policy and to preserve the army. Guchkov, the War Minister, resigned because "the forces of destruction were operating much more rapidly than the forces of construction." The Government in a note to the Allies spoke of " war till victory." The Soviet furiously protested. Armed troops filled the streets and demonstrated menacingly against the Government. Miliukov, who was chiefly reponsible for the offending phrase, was jettisoned, portfolios were redistributed. Tsereteli, Skobelev and Chernov joined the Government as representatives of the Soviet, and Kerensky became Minister of War. A compromise was effected. The Government hesitatingly adopted the formula of " peace without annexations and contributions," and the Soviet was induced to lend its support to the effort to induce a democratised army to fight a defensive war on these principles. The next two months were marked by an extreme application of the principle of moral suasion. The pro-war parties, includ ing the Cadets, Eight Social Eevolutionaries and Plehanov Social Democrats, carried on a vigorous patriotic campaign. Volunteer units were organised under the name of " death battalions." The Soviet admited that attack was a necessary element in defence. Kerensky made a tour through the army. addressing enormous meetings of soldiers and. particularly on the South- Western front, imploring them to take the offensive. Finally the offensive was launched on July 1. The picked units, the death battalions and the Czecho-Slovaks. did wonders and shattered the Austrian right wing. But there was an ominous sign. A large number of soldiers, demoralised by- Bolshevik propaganda, sullenly refused to fight. The spirit of the army, unsupported by organised discipline, was reck- 19 lessly squandered. The best and most active elements were sacrificed. The army was seriously weakened by the offensive, and all the time the Bolshevik propaganda, unrestrained by any form of coercion, had been steadily increasing in strength. On July 15 , simultaneously with an Austro-German counter- offensive in Galicia, a Bolshevik revolt broke out in Petrograd. The Government was helpless. It was saved only by the indifference of the Petrograd garrison, which had no desire to fight for anyone, and by the efforts of a small band of volunteers, consisting of Cossacks, wounded veterans and Black Sea sailors. Prince Lvov resigned, Kerensky became Premier, and the Government was reformed. The Soviet itself had beera surrounded by a threatening crowd of Bolshevik sailors from Kronstadt, and had been saved by the Cossacks. Tsereteli left the Government and returned to the Soviet to fight the Bolsheviks. In Galicia the demoralised Eussian army retreated in a disgraceful panic. Kornilov, appointed a week or so before •commander of the front, took strong measures on his own responsibility, shot down deserters and so checked the debacle. The Government had to approve his measures. Then followed the Kerensky period. The reaction against the Bolsheviks was strong. The Government did use coercion to a limited extent. Several Bolsheviks, including Trotsky and Madame Kollontai, were arrested ; Lenin and others escaped into hiding. General Kornilov was appointed Commander-in- Chief. The tone of the Soviet grew more chastened, and under the pressure of internal difficulties and the shock of the Galician rout the preparations for an international Socialist Conference at Stockholm, which had been so ardently debated before the Bolshevik insurrection, were almost forgotten. Kerensky's method of government was peculiar. He realised that there was a serious conflict between the Soviet parties on the one hand and the so-called ' ' bourgeois ' ' parties on the other. He also realised that the triumph of the extreme ' ' bourgeois ' ' parties would mean reaction and that the triumph of the extreme Socialists or Bolsheviks would be equally dangerous in another sense. His aim was to effect a com promise between the moderate elements on both sides, and to assert the absolute supremacy of the Provisional Government. To this end he assumed in his public declarations a tone of stern authority, and evolved a curious and rather clumsy imita tion of the language of pre-revolutionary State documents. But just as he used up the spirit of the army by exploiting the ardour of volunteers without creating a background of organised dis cipline, so he squandered the moral prestige of the Government by a series of vehement and menacing assertions which, since they were not followed up by corresponding action, created an effect of impotence. He shrank from creating the machinery 20 of coercion, he shrank from the simple duty of establishing a force to uphold the authority he so loudly proclaimed. He saw the elements of the situation, but he did not know what to do with them, how to mould them. He had no real initiative of his own, no constructive capacity. This was demonstrated in a most remarkable manner at the Moscow Conference of State held towards the end of. August. A more thoroughly representative body, one may imagine, has never been assembled in any nation. The leading men and women of all the chief parties . and groups were gathered in the Great Theatre— the Soviets, Army Committees and groups associated with them on one side, the Duma Deputies, Generals, manufacturers and zemstvo and municipal workers on the other. There was a disposition to unite". A strong and wise man would have made the Assembly an occasion effectively to affirm and organise the unity of the nation. The warning speeches of Generals Alexeiey, Kornilov, and Kaledin made a deep impression. Yet Kerensky let this amazing opportunity pass without taking a single practical step. He closed the congress with a painful jumble of indis criminate and hardly intelligible threats , and then collapsed in hysterics. The conference dispersed, shocked and thoroughly alarmed. The unsatisfied demand for a restraining force led to the tragic Kornilov episode and a very serious Government crisis. Kerensky called the Soviet to his aid, declared Kornilov a traitor and had him arrested. Thereafter, distraught and unprotected, he was exposed to the full force of the Bolshevik campaign. The Mensheviks and Social Eevolutionaries in the Soviet, alarmed at the decline of their own power, helped Kerensky to patch up another Coalition Government. Too late, a sort of temporary parliament was convened under the name of the Council of the Eepublic. The Bolsheviks openly preached sedi tion. Most of their arrested leaders had by this time been released from prison. Kerensky did nothing to oppose them. An incurable impressionist, he had not the intellect, the know ledge or the will to clothe his vague and emotional concentions of government in flesh and blood. Meantime the army and fleet were going to pieces, and the Germans had made secure their hold on the Baltic coast. When the Bolsheviks, on November 7, captured the Soviet Congress and attacked the Provisional Government in the Winter Palace they found no one to oppose them but a handful of cadets from the officers' training-schools and a few women soldiers. Kerensky escaped. All the other members of the Government were arrested. The Bolsheviks seized the supreme power. 21 In justice to the successive Provisional Governments it must be said that their scope of action was limited by the obligations they had undertaken when the first Eevolutionary Government was formed, and that they were haunted by the dread of a relapse to the old regime. The extent of the geographical area over which the Eevolution operated imposed on the Govern ment a task that was almost superhuman. And a man of pre eminent genius who might have controlled the surging popular forces did not appear. In any case eight months is a short period, a very brief phase in the history of a Eevolution of such magnitude. X. The Bolsheviks, led by the cold and stubborn fanatic Lenin and the clever adventurer Trotsky, solved the problem of power in a reckless and simplified manner of their own. They cared little enough for Eussia, their aim was to bring about a world revolution. They attracted the soldiers by the promise of immediate peace, the peasants by the promise of immediate socialisation of land, and the workmen by the promise of the immediate establishment of labour control in the factories. They forthwith created an armed force and ruthlessly applied coercion to their opponents. The Bolshevik idea of the triumph of the masses over their exploiters, over the bourgeoisie, spread like an epidemic through the land, and for a time rendered futile every attempt at resistance. The Bolsheviks seized the opportunity, before the army had dispersed, to create a Praotorian guard of their own, and then, masters of the situa tion, proceeded to carry out their social experiments. The Bolsheviks carried out their promises. They did make a peace that placed the richest parts of Eussia under the control of German Imperialists and created in the rest of Eussia a state of perpetual civil war. But, at any rate, the Army broke up finally and the soldiers drifted Back to their homes. The Bol sheviks did proclaim the confiscation of private estates and of monastic and crown lands, but no system was devised for the partition of land among the peasantry. The result was an orgy of plunder and destruction in which the worst instincts of the peasantry found vent, but which brought them not the slightest economic relief. Indiscriminate land grabbing simply led to n strikingly unequal distribution of the land of private estates among the peasantry, and thence to further conflict between villages and individual peasants. The workmen were given control over the factories, or the factories were nationalised. But the workmen proved incapable of manag ing the factories they controlled or of inducing themselves or 22 their comrades to work with any energy. And in spite of the enormous sums spent by the Bolshevik Government on subsidies for the payment of wages to workmen who toyed with their work, the factories closed down one after another, and the workmen drifted into the streets. The store of manu factured goods swiftly declined, paper money became value less, and there was practically nothing to give the peasants in exchange for their produce. Add to this the fact that com munications were cut by civil war or German occupation, that transport, which had been overstrained by the war, had now sunk into a deplorable condition, and that the suggestion of anything like a normal circulation of goods sounded like bitter irony, and it becomes intelligible that the masses in a few months began to realise that the Bolshevik peace was con siderably worse than war. The food shortage became appal ling, and punitive expeditions were sent into the country to extort corn from the peasants. That is the material side. The system of rule is in theory a dictatorship of the proletariat exercised through central and local Soviets of workmen, soldiers, and peasants. The pro pertied classes are disfranchised, also the educated class in so far as its members do not accept the Bolshevik creed. But workmen, too, and peasants who elect non-Bolsheviks find themselves forcibly disfranchised. And in fact, Bolshevik rule is a clumsy autocracy exercised by Lenin and Trotsky through the Eed Guard or Bed Army they formed during the period of the dissolution of the Eegular Army. The Eed Army, which is incapable of resistance to an organised and disciplined force, terrorises the population, and serves as the instrument of a tyranny more immediately cruel, more openly unscrupu lous than any that the Ministers of the old regime could have conceived or exercised. That the Press is completely gagged, that liberty of action is a matter of purchase or evasion, that corruption runs riot, that justice is a legend, that human life has become almost as valueless as the rouble in an epidemic of murder and massacre — these are the cold facts of the Bolshevik rule, and their sinister significance is not mitigated by the fact that by skill, contrivance, or sheer inertia it is possible under such conditons to exist, if not to live. And it speaks well for the fundamental humaneness and decency of the Eussian people that , with all these powerful incitements to evil, the actual quantity of brutal excess has not attained far more astounding dimensions. Yet in the idea and intention of the leaders, at any rate of Lenin, the Bolshevik regime is a genuine experiment in Socialism. And the fact that this extraordinary man and 23 some of his followers believe in it is the only power that gives such a bizarre and revolting system a show of credibility. It matters not to Lenin that, having yielded in the essentials of national existence to German dictatorship, he finds himself subjected to continual German pressure, that he is actually a pawn in the Germans' hands. He has known all along that his reign will be brief, but he is intent on making a Socialist experiment on such a scale and of such contagious power as to provoke a social revolution in the most advanced capitalist countries. Decrees are poured out, plans of industrial and political organisation on communist lines are published in hundreds in the now bulky code of Soviet law. It matters nothing that in Eussia they are so much waste paper, or that the attempts to apply them only increase the terrible anarchy and reduce the triumphant proletariat to prostration. The ideas, thinks Lenin, will gradually leaven the masses of Eussia and perhaps bear fruit at some later date. But more important still, they will, in that strange excitement that emanates from the martyrdom of Eussia, stimulate the awaken ing aspirations of the Western proletariat, and help to deter mine the outlines of that order which the triumph of the world- ^ revolution will bring to birth. Lenin — the inhuman, unmoral, intriguing Lenin — coldly and bitterly and inexorably possessed by his single abnormal idea, regards the world-war and the destruction of Eussia as mere incidents in the practical realisation of his theory. He is a remarkable product of the Eussian autocracy. He is strong in his extraordinary power of abstraction , in his capacity for ignoring at least one half of human nature. But this, too, explains the disastrous consequences of his rule in Eussia and its certain failure. From the point of view of the Eussian people Bolshevism is not so much a doctrine or a political system as a strange mood, a mental phase through which the people had inevitably to pass in emerging from such an autocracy to attain the full stature of conscious nation hood in a modern world. The terrible experience of Bolshevism and German domination are driving mto the popular mind the elementary lessons of organised national life with a force wholly beyond the range of any mere formal or imitative teaching. XI. For the Eussian Eevolution is the awakening of a great people. It is a testing of latent powers under extraordinary conditions. It is as though the Eussian people were determined 24 to throw off the tutelage of the West and of its own leaders, and to discover a way of its own. No one could pass through the Eevolution without marvelling at the perpetual talk and inquiry, the perpetual conflict of ideas, often crude, always picturesque. At every street corner, in every home, in every railway carriage, the great debate went on unceasingly. Men, parties, principles, methods were tried and tested with unwearying energy. War, international politics, local adminis tration, religion, art, morals were subjected to a frank dis cussion that could only seem preposterous to the sober peoples •of the West. The experiment of extreme Socialism following on the Tsarist autocracy afforded an immense scope for an inquiry in which the whole people engaged. And the inquiry was not merely theoretical ; it was practical. With a strange childish zest, the people groped its way among human institu tions and the laws of nature, recklessly ignoring received opinions and the dim light of a semi-conscious experience, ¦separating and reuniting, destroying and clumsily attempting to rebuild, determined to accept nothing on authority, but to discover its own particular reaction on the visible world. The Eevolution is, in fact, a stirring up of an immense fallow land of reserves of human capacity, with results which only later generations will be able to estimate. Workmen broke away from their employers, soldiers from their officers, peasants rejected the idea of a superior class of landowners. Nationalities released from a highly centralised control started off on adventures of their own into new spheres of ideas and political and economic relations, often enough only to fall under the domination of Germany. The people of Southern Eussia tried by a violent experiment to discover whether they were, as they had been told, a separate Ukrainian nation or not. The Tatars experimented on the question as to whether their most vital cultural and economic affinities were with Turkey or Eussia. And everywhere the laggards, the apathetic, those who were disposed to acquiesce in things as they were, were caught up in the general whirl, forced to see, to learn, to test their likes and dislikes by the hard experience of varied possibilities. For the Eussian intelligentsia, too, for the educated class, this has been a cruel testing time. They were thrown into direct contact with the people. The barrier of the bureau cracy was broken down. Power and responsibility were thrust upon them. Their hoarded theories were flung into direct contact with the unenlightened instincts of the people. Monarchists, Cadets, Social Eevolutionaries, Bolsheviks. mystics and positivists, worshippers of the people and wor shippers of power, all were tried, all were catechised, from all were demanded enlightenment and practical guidance. Bound 25 down to inaction under the old regime, the intelligentsia had sought mental satisfaction in the construction of elaborate theories, and somehow, in the course of the Eevolution, the people, in its manifold collective action, practically explored every nook and cranny of these elaborate theories. It was an extraordinary mingling of Eussian culture in its varied aspects with the real life of the whole people, with the ele mental instincts which, in the long spaces of history, supply the effective impulse for national organisation. The intelli gentsia, hitherto isolated, was moulded and kneaded into the popular consciousness, permeated this consciousness and was permeated by it, saw its theories at work, saw their strange and erratic modifications in the thought and action of the Eussian people. And the claim of the intelligentsia to national leadership was subjected to the most cruel test of all. After eight months of experiment the people dethroned an intelligentsia that had proved to be as inexperienced in action as the people itself was inexperienced in thought. The intelligentsia were treated as pariahs by the people whom they had idealised, for whom they had thought and worked their life long. Yet perhaps this cruel test was the most effective of all. For after this new and more bitter separation which brought to both sides disaster, it is true, but also a chastening view of realities, the compelling necessity of a working reunion, on a common national basis, of a disillu sionised intelligentsia and a people now finally convinced of- its incapacity to walk alone, emerges as a sign of returning national health. XII. The recovery of Eussia is certain. What form the process will assume in its later stages it is difficult for human reason to discern. The Eevolution has been a shock to the Western mentality. It has baffled the Allies, and baffled the Germans. From the point of view of temporary strategic calculations it has seemed to many an unmitigated calamity. But if the world-war be regarded as a great process of social and national transformation far transcending purely strategic considera tions, then the Eussian Eevolution will be seen as one of the most vital factors in the creation of a new world society, as the imposing assertion by a gifted people, inhabiting a vast area containing a large proportion of the world's natural resources, of a claim actively and independently to participate in the establishment of a world-civilisation. And if we havf not learnt it through the war, then at least the Eussian Eevolu tion may teach us that our powerful Western civilisatioi unmodified, unrevised, cannot become the civilisation of the 26 world, that in the presence of the fierce and tragic conflict of the peoples of the West over its dominant principles the awakened and awakening peoples must, in adopting its mar vellous mechanism , test its spirit and adapt it to their very jaried needs. Consider the infinity of possible reactions in Eussia, whose own civilisation in the epoch now past grew up under the mingled influences of the Mediterranean South, the European West, the Middle East, and China. For the impulse of the Eussian Eevolution, that strange. confused awakening of social and national aspiration, that scathing revision of all the elements of social structure, has swept across the Eurasian continent from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the White to the Black Sea. It has shaken the homes of ancient civilisations that had no part in the upbuilding of modern Europe. The modern Western civilisation that we once thought, in the first flush of our technical triumphs, we might impose on them intact is being now borne to them in the light of the Eussian experiment, the Eussian revision. The way in which China and India will enter into the new world-civilisation, whose type we are now struggling to dis cern in war, will be largely determined by what is happening and what will happen in Eussia. More than that , we cannot be sure as to the possible reaction on Europe. First of all, there is the narrower question as to the effect of the Eevolution on the course of the war. True, the collapse of the Eussian army gave Germany a tem porn ry military superiority over the Allies. But what is equally certain is that the extraordinary vagaries of a Eussia defeated, divided, and ruined have had an extremely disconcerting effect on the systematic and securely self-confident strategists and politicians of Germany. And whether or not Eussia recovers soon enough again to take her place in the war with a regular army — which is a very moot question — the effect on German plans of her reckless experiment in self-determination is of very sensible military advantage to the Allies. And the influence of that very peculiar and very powerful Eussian contagion on the peoples who are cramned up in the narrow spaces of Central Europe cannot be wholly left out of account as a possible auxiliary to our military pressure on the Western front. But that is by no means the chief point to be considered^ The question of the possible influence of the Eussian Eevolu tion is of importance to us not so much in relation to the immediate military conflict between Germany and ourselves as in relation to the problem of the world-civilisation. The Eussian people has engaged in a very striking experiment for"* its own purposes, its own needs. But it is necessary for us to scrutinise very closely the results of that experiment. The 27 Revolution has exposed secrets of the social structure of which we were only dimly aware. It has submitted our own most advanced theories to a severe, if not a thorough, test. It has given full rein to powerful forces that are latent in other societies. It has reviewed with astounding frankness our confirmed habits, our innate prejudices, our cherished institu tions, our calm sense of achievement. This Russian experi ment was actually a practical test of our own civilisation. And as such it is a warning. This warning is coming home to us, and will be brought home to us in a variety of ways. It will be well if it can be appreciated intellectually. The war has sharpened our faculty of self-criticism, but the Eevolution, which opens up the ulti mate implications of the war, should stimulate this faculty to the most intense activity. The Eussian people has suffered not for itself alone. Its search and its suffering are already an immensely important contribution to the upbuilding of the world-civilisation. And the lessons it has learned are lessons that we. for our own sakes and for the sake of the work before jis, need to read without prejudice and with unceasing alert- "ness. Those who have passed through the Eussian Eevolu tion will never look on Western civilisation with the same eyes again. They have seen the veil of appearances torn away, and rthey know of other things and are uneasy. For this and for a hundred other reasons the Allies, who are fighting for the liberating principle of civilisation, are deeply concerned in the recovery of Eussia. And for the sake of what they certainly know to be of permanent value in the achievement of modern Europe they cannot but lend their aid in the recovery, so that from the mingling of that tragic and illuminating Eussian experience with the process of reconstruction in which we are involved there may emerge a wisdom and a power sufficient to bear the burden of the higher civilisation that shall make the peoples of the world in spirit one. That Eussia is and will be Eussia is a fundamental fact. One can perceive some of the probabilities and possibilities of the immediate future. The people, exhausted by its great* experiment, will demand order, will turn for rest to many of its former habits of thought. Possibly a dictatorship may be necessary for a short time in order to render possible sheer physical recuperation. Perhaps there may be a period of constitutional monarchy as a concession to bewildered senti ment. Decentralisation and a satisfactory solution of the agrarian problem are obvious conditions of stable government. Granted the removal of artificial Impediments through the defeat of Germany, the nationalities, taught by bitter experi ence the danger of isolation, will drift into economic and 28 political reunion with the biggest people of the plain no doubt after taking all precautions to guarantee their national rights. And Eussian culture will develop with a new vigour and assume new depth. All this, of course, not without constant friction, repeated disappointment, and frequent perturbations. But Eussia will be Eussia. And when Eussia is outwardly Eussia again she will not be, either in structure or in mood, simply a replica on a large scale of any one of our Western States. For the ideas and experi ences through which she has passed during the Eevolution will leaven her life and in a society more orderly, more firmly com pact and yet free, will spring out in novel forms, and will find curious application in her institutions, her economic methods. her literature, and even in the religion that will again be a power in her life. A nation with such fresh and newly- released energy, a nation that, half blindly now but with a wisdom rapidly maturing in harsh experience, is exerting such a will to discover the real bases of its national existence, must become in our collective civilisation a power of an entirely new quality, and will be a fecund source, of anxiety perhaps but also of great intellectual and moral stimulus to the peoples of the West who are fighting their way out into a world of new and broader endeavour. :>9 r : . *-Cj^ffl^^^*'- flit' ?m8 mmm \if,$*s Tfi'lpRiiss^^ ^•^py^ShkliSv^l^pion 2/ Memorandum oh. the Finnish Question, 6d. net. 3.- LeninVFightin^Force^'byJ^ 4. " London, underlie, Bolsheviks, -^''^^^^^^^^lM^ A' Dream, by;John\C6ui'iiiosr'4d'*cnct.' <;'PjftX/f i 1 S il C*JCt£*- Ari ^£ o V?g^ MS 8. *The;Case foft Bessarabia; bj;MfcP^Miliuk^?M^etMf^§ -.9. ' ^T^^pirit^lfXthejRu^iakJRefS jutiphli^^^^^^&^p rfeti "' _.-Tsi*.« mm M 3tlC>*tlS? II. Letter from P6tf6g?aaff^fc^^»^^^ ¦t:" :,- ?x ". 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