Circumstances of the March revolution
Revolutions are not definite political acts carried out by the majority in a nation who are unanimous in desiring a single definite object. Revolutionaries and their historians often try to give them that character afterwards, but that is only an illustration of man’s general tendency to supply his instinctive acts with family pedigrees of irreproachable, orderly reasoning. It would be less dignified but more honest to admit that revolution is a kind of speeding up of the political flux, during which tendencies that in ordinary times would perhaps only become noticeable in the course of years, come to full fruition in a few weeks or days. Revolution turns the slow river of political development into a rapid in which the slightest action has an immediate effect, and the canoe of government answers more violently to a paddle dipped for a moment than in more ordinary times to the organised and prolonged effort of its whole crew.
Those servants of the autocracy who fermented disorder in Petrograd in March 1917 believed that by creating and suppressing an artificial, premature revolt they could forestall and perhaps altogether prevent the more serious revolt which they had good reason to expect in the future. They were wrong, because revolution is not an act of political life but a state of political life. Hoping to crush a political act, they created the state in which the old means of control slipped from their hands and they became incapable of the suppression of any acts whatsoever.
Their immediate political opponents made the same mistake as the servants of the autocracy. They believed that the autocracy would carry out its plan and therefore did their best to prevent the revolution. Thus, in the days when the revolution of March 1917 began we had the spectacle of the autocracy wrestling with the bourgeoisie, both far removed from the actual people, both gambling with the lives of the people with entirely different objects. The autocracy was trying to create a revolution which would fail. The bourgeoisie was trying to prevent the autocracy from creating a revolution at all. Looking back over a year, it is almost laughable to think that it was the autocracy that arrested the whole labour group of the Central War Industries Committee, because that group of patriotic socialists had shown themselves capable of preventing trouble with the workmen. It is more than laughable to remember that Miliukov, the Cadet leader, sent a statement to the papers alleging that someone pretending to be Miliukov had been urging the workmen to come out into the streets, but that actually begged the workmen, for their own sakes, to do nothing of the kind.
This is not the place in which to give detailed accounts of the methods whereby the autocracy prepared the artificial fireworks, which, unfortunately for them, turned into a very genuine volcano.
It is enough to say that for several months before the revolution they had been running kindergarten classes for policemen in the use of machine guns, just outside Petrograd that armoured cars had been kept back from the front with a view to moving target practice in the streets of the capital, and that weeks before the actual disorders, Petrograd had been turned into a fortified battleground, with machine gun embrasures in the garrets of the houses at points of strategic advantage. Meanwhile, the food shortage, already serious in the preceding September, had been steadily emphasised. The whole labour of the country had been mobilised, out in uniforms, armed, and taken from the land, thus insuring starvation for the nation as a whole in the not distant future. Starvation in the present was inspired by the complete breakdown in the always inadequate transport. Dissatisfaction with the government was common to every class of the population, although it had different causes. Thus the bourgeoisie were dissatisfied with the government because it put difficulties in the way of a successful waging of the war that was to give Russia Constantinople. The aristocracy were dissatisfied with the Tsar on account of his inability to keep his family in order, or to hide the fact that it was in disorder. The folk, the great bulk of the nation, were dissatisfied with the government because they held the government responsible for their increasingly difficult conditions. They were dissatisfied with the government for waging the war, while the classes above them were dissatisfied with the government for not waging it well enough.
For one moment these various discontents were united, and in one matter. When the revolution had begun, when the flux had already gathered speed, when the banks of the hitherto placid stream were already crumbling under the pressure of the torrent, there was not a single class in the nation that was not dissatisfied with the Tsar. The Tsar, accordingly, left the stage as politely as he could, as painlessly as a person in a play. And seeing the bloodless character of his removal, and mistaking his removal for the object and end of the revolution, English, Americans and French united in applauding the most moderate, the biggest, the most surprising revolution in the world. The bourgeois classes in the fighting countries, and those of the labouring classes who had been tamed by reading the newspapers, to a happy acquiescence in bourgeois ideas, were a little troubled lest the disturbance in Russia should affect their war; they having forgotten that they were fighting for democracy, and that the enfranchisement of 180 million souls was in itself a greater victory than they had set out to gain, so that, from that moment, the main object of the war should have been to save that victory. But if the bourgeois classes in the Allied countries were a little troubled, their disquiet was as nothing in comparison with the helpless terror of the bourgeois classes in Russia. They had taken no part in the actual starting of the revolution. Miliukov, as he openly confessed to his party, had seen from his window the soldiers pouring out into the street with red flags to fight for the people instead of for their masters, and he had said to himself, ‘there goes the Russian Revolution, and it will be crushed in a quarter of an hour’. A little later he had seen more soldiers in the streets and decided that it would not be crushed so easily. It was only when the risks had already been taken by plain soldiers and workmen, by Cossacks who refused to fire on them; it was only when the revolution had begun, that the already existing organ of the bourgeoisie, the Duma, threw itself into line, and, foam on the crest of an irresistible wave, tried vainly to pretend that it had the power to control and direct the wave itself.
Already a newer, more vital organ was forming. While Miliukov was formulating his ideas about the preservation of the dynasty, or in other words, the transfer of the autocracy to the bourgeoisie, the Soviet of Workmen’s Deputies, at first merely a small group of Duma labour members, had formulated quite other ideas, and declared that the revolution belonged to those who made it, not to those who stood aside and then sought to profit by it, and had stated that neither Miliukov nor the outworn Duma had the right to decide their future who had won their freedom, but that that task would be undertaken by a constituent assembly which should represent all Russia. The subsequent history illustrated the necessary opportunism of all parties in a time of revolution, since within a few weeks Miliukov and his party had declared for a republic, and, when the constituent assembly met, it had already earned itself a place, like that of the Duma, among the relics of the past, and was gently set aside by the Soviet which had been the first cause of its summoning.
The Provisional government and the Soviet
There were thus formed two bodies, each of which claimed to represent the revolutionary nation. The first of these was the Provisional government, appointed by an executive committee of the Duma, and so did indirectly represent that body, which, never fully representative of the people, had lost in the course of the war any claim to stand for anything except the bourgeois and privileged classes. The second of these was the Soviet of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Deputies. Every thousand workmen and every company of soldiers had the right to send one member to the Soviet. From the very first there could be no doubt in the mind of an unprejudiced observer as to which of these two bodies best represented the Russian people. I do not think I shall ever again be so happy in my life as I was during those first days when I saw working men and peasant soldiers sending representatives of their class and not o
f mine. I remembered Shelley’s,
‘Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few’,
and wondered that this thing had not come to pass before. And I though, how applicable to revolution are Sir Thomas Browne’s words on the Flood when he wrote: ‘That there was a Deluge once, seems not to me so great a Miracle as that there is not one always.’
Immediately there became visible a definite fissure, soon a wide gulf, between the ideals of these two bodies, the government and the Soviet. The people, the working classes and the peasants, who suffered most from the war, demanded that steps should be taken to secure peace. They did not want to fight to get territory for the sake of some phantasmagoric gain which did not affect them, which they did not understand. They were starving already, and saw worse starvation ahead. The government, on the other hand, was, if anything, except for the presence in it of Kerensky the labour member, more definitely imperialistic than the autocracy whose place it had taken.
The gulf between the working classes and the government became suddenly deeper when it was realised that the future of the revolution depended on the possession of the army. If the army were not to be swept into the revolution, if it were allowed to remain apart from politics, it would be a passive weapon in the hands of the government, who would thus be able to suppress the Soviets, and so the true expression of the people’s will, whenever it should think fit. If the government had been able to retain possession of the army then Miliukov might have had his way, and the bourgeoisie would have secured the profits of the revolt of the masses.
This, however, was not to be, and immediately the contradiction between revolution and war of the imperialistic kind became evident. The army, which at that time meant practically the whole of the younger peasantry, took the share in politics it had a right to take. From that moment the future of the Soviets was assured, and the bourgeois government was doomed to be a government only by the goodwill of the Soviets which, within a few days of the beginning of the revolution, were the only real power in the country.
That they had been right in fearing retention of the army by the bourgeoisie was proved again and again, by Kerensky, Kornilov, Kaledin, Alexeiev, Dutov, at subsequent periods of the revolution, each one in turn basing his resistance to the Soviets on some part of the army which had been kept free from the contagion of free political expression.
Then began the long struggle of the summer. The Soviets, in which the moderates who desired to keep the government as a sort of executive organ, mistrusting their own abilities, were in a majority, exerted all their influence on the government in the direction of peace. The government made its representations to the Allies, but, at any rate at first, gambled on the future and pretended that things were not so bad and that Russia could still take an active part in the war. There was a decisive moment when Miliukov wrote a note to the Allies calculated to lull them into the belief that the changes in Russia meant nothing, and that Russia stood by her old claims. The soldiers and people poured into the streets in protest, and that lie had to be publicly withdrawn.
Already there was serious opposition to the moderate party in the Soviets from the Bolsheviks, who urged that coalition with the bourgeoisie was merely postponing peace, and bringing starvation and disaster nearer. The Moderates proposed a Stockholm Conference, at which socialist groups of all countries should meet and try to come to a common understanding. This was opposed by the Allied goverments and by the Bolsheviks, on the grounds that the German majority socialists would be the agents of the German government. One deadlock followed another. Each successive deadlock strengthened the party of the Bolsheviks who held that the Provisional government was an incubus, and that all authority should belong to the Soviets, to which in internal affairs, it actually did belong.
The Bolshevik leaders, Lenin and Trotsky, had come from exile in Western countries not merely to take their share in the Russian Revolution, but to use Russia in kindling the world revolution. They called for peace, but peace for them was not an end in itself. They could say with Christ, that they brought not peace but a sword. For they hoped that in stirring the working classes of the world to demand peace from their goverments, they would be putting into their hands the sword that was necessary for the social revolution in which cause they had, like many of their friends, spent the best years of their lives.
In their own country, at any rate, they have proved that they were right in their calculation. The struggle for peace and the failure to obtain it shook the government into the disastrous adventure of the Galician advance. It was shaken again by the Galician retreat and weakened with every telegram from Allied countries that emphasised the continuance of the war. Each shock for the government was also a shock for the moderate party in the Soviets. The struggle in Russia became, as the Bolsheviks wished it should become, a struggle between the classes, a struggle in which the issue became ever clearer between the working and the privileged classes. The government went to Moscow for moral support and came back without it. The Kornilov mutiny, a definite threat against the Soviets by a handful of privileged classes, (made in the guise of a patriotic movement and therefore supported by Kornilov himself and by certain of the Allies), merely strengthened the organisations it was intended to overthrow. Within the Soviets the moderate party which had already come by force of events to be a sort of annexe of the bourgeoisie, grew weaker and weaker after this illustration of the danger of their policy. Just as the government went to Moscow to seek support in a conference, so the moderate party, feeling support slipping from under it, knowing that the next meeting of the All Russian Assembly of Soviets would find it in a minority, treacherously sought a new foothold in an artificial democratic assembly. Not even these tactics shook the actual fabric of the Soviets, and when, in October, first Petrograd, then Moscow, showed a huge Bolshevik majority, the Bolshevik leaders were so confident that they had the country behind them that they made a very single arrangement for the ejection of the government openly over the telephone, and, notwithstanding, neither the government nor the old moderates (now in a minority) could muster the authority to prevent them.
The point that I wish to make is this that from the first moment of the revolution to the present day, the real authority of the Soviets has been unshaken. The October Revolution did not give authority to the Soviets. That had always been theirs, by their very nature. It was merely a public open illustration of the change of opinion brought about in the Soviets themselves by the change of opinion in the working man and soldiers who elected them. The October Revolution cleared away the waste growths that hid the true government of Russia from the world, and as the smoke of the short struggle died away, it was seen that that government had merely to formulate an authority it already possessed.
What is the republic of the Soviets?
The formulation of the Soviet constitution was a matter of actual practice guided always by the definite principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat which I have elsewhere briefly discussed in speaking of the Constituent Assembly. There had been a number of small, formal changes or readjustments, of independent parts in the machine, but I do not think either opponents or supporters of the Soviet government can quarrel very seriously with the following statement. Every workman, every peasant in Russia has the right to vote in the election of deputies to his local Soviet, which is made up of a number of deputies corresponding to the number of electors. The local Soviets can choose their delegates to an All-Russian Assembly of Soviets. This All-Russian Assembly elects its Central Executive Committee, on the basis of approximately one in five of the delegates to the assembly. This Central Executive Committee controls, appoints and dismisses the People’s Commissaries, who are the actual government. All decrees of state importance are passed by the Central Executive Committee before being issued as laws by the Council of People’s Commissaries.
At each successive All-Russian Assembly of So
viets, the Executive Committee automatically resigns, and the Assembly as a whole expresses its approval or disapproval of what has been done by its representatives and by the Council of Commissaries during the period since the previous All-Russian Assembly, and, electing a new Executive Committee, which in political character accurately corresponds to the party colouring of the Assembly ensures that the controlling organ shall accurately reflect the feeling of the electorate.
No limit is set to local reelection. Deputies are withdrawn and others substituted for them whenever this seems necessary to the local electorate. Thus the country is free from the danger of finding itself governed by the ghosts of its dead opinions, and, on the other hand, those ghosts find themselves expediously laid in their graves as soon as, becoming ghosts, they cease to have the right to rule.
Just as the Soviet constitution ensures that the actual lawgivers shall be in the closest touch with the people, just as it ensures that indeed instead of in amiable theory the people shall be their own lawgivers, so it also provides for intercommunication in a contrary direction. The remotest atom on the periphery is not without its influence on the centre. So also the centre, through the Soviets, affects the atoms of the periphery. The institution of Soviets means that every minutest act of the Council of People’s Commissaries is judged and interpreted in accordance with its own local conditions by each local Soviet. No other form of government could give this huge diverse entity of Russia, with its varying climates and races, with its plains, its steppes, its wild mountains, the free, local autonomy of interpretation which it needs. The shepherd of the Caucasus, the Cossack from the Urals and the fisherman from the Yenisei can sit together in the All-Russian Assembly, and know that the laws, whose principles they approve, are not steel bands too loose for one and throttling another, but are instruments which each Soviet can fashion in its own way for the special needs of its own community.