History of the Russian Revolution Vol 1 Part 8

In those .rst days, when both the soldiers and the workers were intensely excited about the future of the of.cers who had returned to their troops, the Mezhrayontsi, a Social Demo-cratic organisation close to the Bolsheviks, formulated this sore question with revolutionary audacity. "In order that the aristocrats and of.cers shall not deceive you," said their appeal to the soldiers, "choose your own platoon, company and regiment commanders, accept only those of.cers whom you know to be friends of the people." And what happened? This proclamation, which adequately met the situation, was immediately con.scated by the Executive Committee, and Cheidze in his speech called it an act of provocateurs. The democrats, you see, were not in the least embarra.s.sed about limiting the freedom of the press when it came to dealing blows to the left. Fortunately their own freedom was suf.-ciently limited, for the workers and soldiers, although supporting the Executive Committee as their highest organ, at all important moments corrected the policy of the leaders.h.i.+p by direct interference. Before two days pa.s.sed, the Executive Committee was trying by means of "Order No.2" to annul the .rst order, limiting its application to the Petrograd military district. In vain. "Order No.1" was indestructible it had not invented anything, but merely af.rmed and strengthened what had already come to pa.s.s both in the rear and at the front, and was demanding recognition. Even liberal deputies, when face to face with the soldiers, defended themselves against questions and reproaches by referring to "Order No.1." But in the sphere of Big Politics, that audacious order became the chief argument of the bour-geoisie against the Soviet. From that time on, the beaten generals discovered in "Order No.1 "the chief obstacle which had prevented them from crus.h.i.+ng the German armies. Its origin was even traced to Germany! The Compromisers never ceased to apologise for what they had done, and bewildered the soldiers by trying to take away with their right hand what their left hand had let slip.

Meanwhile in the Soviet the majority of rank-and-.le deputies were already demanding the election of of.cers. The democrats got excited. Finding no better argument, Sukhanov tried to frighten the deputies with the idea that the bourgeoisie, to whom they had turned over the power, would not go this far. The democrats frankly hid behind Guchkov's back. In their scheme, the liberals occupied the same place which the monarchy was to have occupied in the scheme of the liberals. "As I was returning from the tribune to my place," Sukhanov relates, "I ran into a soldier who blocked my path, and shaking his .st in my face, angrily shouted something about 'gentlemen who have never been in a soldier's skin.'" After this "excess" our democrat, completely losing his equilibrium, ran to .nd Kerensky, and only with the latter's help was "the question somehow smoothed over." These people did nothing all the time but smooth questions over.

For two weeks they succeeded in pretending that they had not noticed the war. At last, however, a further postponement became impossible. On the 14th of March, the Executive Committee introduced into the Soviet the project of a manifesto written by Sukhanov and addressed to "the people of the whole world." The liberal press soon named this doc.u.ment-which united the right and left Compromisers-" Order No.1 in the sphere of foreign policy." But this .attering appraisal was just as false as the doc.u.ment to which it referred. "Order No. 1" had been the honest answer of the lower ranks themselves to the questions raised before the army by the revolution. The manifesto of March 14 was the treacherous answer of the upper ranks to the questions honestly presented to them by soldiers and workers.

The manifesto of course expressed a desire for peace, and moreover a democratic peace without annexations or indemnities. But long before the February revolution, the Western imperialists had learned to make use of that same phraseology. It was exactly in the name of a durable, honourable, "democratic" peace, that Wilson was getting ready just at that moment to go into the war. The pious Mr. Asquith had given to Parliament a learned cla.s.si.cation of annexations, from which it could be unmistakably inferred that all those annexations were to be condemned as immoral which con.icted with the interests of Great Britain. As for French diplomacy, its very essence consisted in giving the most liberating possible aspect to the greediness of the shopkeeper and moneylender. The Soviet doc.u.ment, to which one cannot deny a rather simple sincerity of motive, dropped with fatal perfec-tion into the well-worn rut of of.cial French hypocrisy. The manifesto promised ".rmly to defend our own freedom" against foreign militarism. The French social patriots had been occupied with just that business ever since August 1914. "The hour has come for the peo-ple to take into their own hands the decision about war and peace," declares this manifesto, whose authors, in the name of the Russian people, had just turned over the decision of that question to the big bourgeoisie. The workers of Germany and Austria-Hungary were sum-moned by the manifesto, "to refuse to serve as an instrument of conquest and spoliation in the hands of kings, landlords and bankers' Those words are the quintessence of a lie-for the leaders of the Soviet had no intention of breaking off their own alliance with the kings of Great Britain and Belgium, with the Emperor of j.a.pan, with the landlords and bankers of their own and all the countries of the Entente. While turning over the leaders.h.i.+p of foreign policy to Miliukov, who had been scheming not long before to convert East Prussia into a Russian province, the leaders of the Soviet summoned the German and Austro-Hungarian workers to follow the lead of the Russian revolution. Their theatrical condemnation of slaughter altered nothing: the Pope himself was doing that. With the help of magniloquent phrases directed against the shadows of bankers, landlords and kings, these Compromis-ers were converting the February revolution into an instrument in the hands of real kings, landlords and bankers. In his telegram of salutation to the Provisional Government, Lloyd George had appraised the revolution as a proof that "the present war is in its foundations a struggle for popular government and freedom." The manifesto of March 14 a.s.sociated itself with Lloyd George "in its foundations," and gave invaluable aid to the war propa-ganda in America. Miliukov's paper was a thousand times right when it declared that "the manifesto, although it began with so typical a note of paci.sm, developed an ideology es-sentially common to us and to all our allies." If the Russian liberals nevertheless at times .ercely attacked the manifesto, and the French censors.h.i.+p would not let it through, that was merely due to a fear of the interpretation which would be given it by revolutionary but still trustful ma.s.ses. Although written by Zimmerwaldists, the manifesto signalised the victory of the patriotic wing. The local soviets understood the signal. They p.r.o.nounced the slogan "war against war" unpermissible. Even in the Urals and in Kostroma, where the Bolsheviks were strong, the patriotic manifesto received unanimous approval. No wonder, when in the Petrograd Soviet itself the Bolsheviks offered no resistance to this false doc.u.ment.

After a few weeks it became necessary to make partial payments on bills of exchange. The Provisional Government issued a war loan, of course called "liberty loan." Tseretelli explained that since the government "as a whole and in general" was ful.lling its obliga-tions, the democracy ought to support the loan. In the Executive Committee the opposition captured more than a third of the votes. But at the plenum of the Soviet (April 22) only 112 votes were cast against the loan out of almost 2,000. From this the conclusion is sometimes drawn that the Executive Committee was further to the left than the Soviet. But that is not true. The Soviet was merely more honest than the Executive Committee: if the war is in defence of the revolution, then you must give money for the war, you must support the loan. The Executive Committee was not more revolutionary, but more evasive. It lived on ambiguities and reservations. It supported the government set up by itself only "as a whole and in general," and took the responsibility for the war "in so far as." These petty trickeries are alien to the ma.s.ses. Soldiers cannot .ght " in so far as," nor die "as a whole and in general."

In order to reinforce the victory of statesmanly thinking over wild talk, General Alex-eiev who had been intending on March 5 to shoot all "gangs" of propagandists was on April 1 of.cially placed at the head of the armed forces. From then on everything was in order. The inspirer of the czarist foreign policy, Miliukov, was Minister of Foreign Affairs; the leader of the army under the czar, Alexeiev, had become commander-in-chief of the revolution. The succession was fully re-established.

At the same time, however, the Soviet leaders felt compelled by the logic of the situation to unravel the loops of the net they were weaving. The of.cial democracy mortally feared those of.cers whom they tolerated and supported. They could not help opposing to them their own authority, trying to .nd support for it among the rank-and-.le soldiers and make it as independent of the of.cers as possible. At the session of March 6, the Executive Committee considered it advisable to install its own commissars in all regiments and in all military inst.i.tutions. Thus was created a three way bond between the soldier and the Soviet; the regiments sent their representatives to the Soviet; the Executive Committee sent its commissars to the regiments; and .nally at the head of each regiment stood an elective committee, const.i.tuting a sort of lower nucleus of the Soviet.

One of the princ.i.p.al duties of the commissars was to keep watch over the political reliability of the staff and commanding of.cers. "The democratic rgime outdid in this respect the autocratic," says Denikin with indignation. And he boasts how cleverly his staff intercepted and handed over to him the cipher correspondence of the commissars with Petrograd. To watch over monarchists and feudal lords what could be more outrageous! To steal the correspondence of commissars with the government is, of course, a different matter. But however things stood in the .eld of morals, the internal situation in the ruling apparatus of the army at that time is perfectly clear: each side was afraid of the other and watching the other with hostility; they were united only by their common fear of the soldier. Even the generals and admirals, whatever further hopes and plans they may have had, saw clearly that without a democratic smoke-screen things would go badly with them. The resolutions on committees in the .eet were drawn up by Kolchak. He counted on strangling the committees in the future. But since it was impossible for the present to take a single step without them, Kolchak interceded with the staff to get them con.rmed. Similarly General Markov, one of the future White chieftains, sent to the ministry early in April a plan for the inst.i.tution of commissars to keep watch over the loyalty of the commanding staff. Thus the "age-old laws of the army"-that is, the traditions of military bureaucratism-went to pieces like straws under the pressure of the revolution.

The soldiers approached the committees from the opposite angle, and united around them against the commanding staff. And although the committees did defend of.cers against the soldiers, this was only within certain limits. The situation of an of.cer who came into con.ict with the committee became unbearable. Thus was created the unwritten right of the soldiers to remove the commanders. On the western front by the month of July, according to Denikin, sixty of the old of.cers ranking from commander of a corps to commander of a regiment, had gone. Similar removals had occurred within the regiments.

At that time a meticulous secretarial work was going on in the War Ministry, in the Ex-ecutive Committee, in the Contact Sessions, aiming to create "reasonable" relations in the army, raise the authority of the of.cers, and reduce the army committees to a secondary and mainly economic role. But while the high-up leaders were thus cleaning away the shadow of the revolution with the shadow of a broom, the committees were actually developing into a powerful system ascending toward the Petrograd Executive Committee and strength-ening its organisational control over the army. The Executive Committee used this control, however, chie.y in order, through the commissars and committees, to drag the army once more into the war. More and more the soldiers found themselves pondering the question: how does it come about that committees elected by us so often say, not what we think, but what our of.cers want of us?

The trenches arc more and more frequently sending deputies to the capital to .nd out how things stand. From the beginning of April this movement of the soldiers from the front becomes continual. Every day ma.s.s conversations are going on in the Tauride. Arriving soldiers are stirring their heavy brains, trying to .nd their way among the mysteries of the politics of an Executive Committee which cannot give a clear answer to any single question. The army is ponderously moving over to a Soviet position-but only in order the more clearly to convince itself of the bankruptcy of the Soviet leaders.h.i.+p.

The liberals, not daring to oppose the Soviet openly, nevertheless tried to carry on a struggle for the control of the army. Chauvinism, of course, must serve as their political bond with the soldiers. The Kadet minister s.h.i.+ngarev, in one of the conferences with the trench delegates, defended the order of Guchkov against "unnecessary indulgence" towards war-prisoners, and spoke of "German ferocity." His remarks did not meet with the slightest sympathy. The conference decisively expressed itself in favour of relieving the conditions of the prisoners of war. These were the same men whom the liberals had so casually accused of excesses and ferocities. But the grey men from the front had their own criterion. They considered it permissible to take vengeance on an of.cer for insulting soldiers, but it seemed contemptible to them to avenge on a captive German soldier the real or imagined ferocity of Ludendorff. The Eternal Standards of Morality remained, alas, quite foreign to those rough and lousy muzhiks.

Out of the attempt of the bourgeoisie to get control of the army there arose a contest-which, however, never came to any thing-between the liberals and the Compromisers. It was at a congress of delegates from the western front on the 7th-10th of April. This .rst congress of one of the fronts was to be a decisive political test of the army, and both sides sent to Minsk their best forces. From the Soviet: Tseretelli, Cheidze, Skobelev, Gvozdev. From the bourgeoisie: Rodzianko himself, the Kadet, Demosthenaes Rodichev, and others.

An intense feeling reigned in the crowded hall of the Minsk theatre, and spread in ripples throughout the town. The reports of the delegates painted a picture of the real state of affairs. Fraternisation was going an along the whole front; the soldiers were taking the initiative more and more boldly; the commanding staff could not even think of repressive measures. What could the liberals say here? Faced by this pa.s.sionate audience, they at once gave up the idea of opposing their own resolutions to those of the Soviet. They con.ned themselves to a patriotic note in their speeches; of greeting, and soon erased themselves entirely. The battle was won by the democrats without a struggle. Their task was not to lead the ma.s.ses against the bourgeoisie, but to hold them back, The slogan of peace equivocally woven in with war for the defence of the revolution, in the spirit of the manifesto of March 14-ruled the congress. The Soviet resolution on the war was adopted by 610 votes against 8, with 46 abstaining. The last hope of the liberals, that of opposing the front to the rear, the army to the Soviet, went up in smoke. But the democratic leaders returned from the congress more frightened than inspired by their victory. They had seen the ghosts raised by the revolution and they felt unable to cope with them.

CHAPTER 15.

THE BOLSHEVIKS AND LENIN.

On the 3rd of April Lenin arrived in Petrograd from abroad. Only from that moment does the Bolshevik Party begin to speak out loud, and, what is more important, with its own voice.

For Bolshevism the .rst months of the revolution had been a period of bewilderment and vacillation. In the "manifesto" of the Bolshevik Central Committee, drawn up just after the victory of the insurrection, we read that the workers of the shops and factories, and likewise the mutinied troops, must immediately elect their representatives to the Provisional Revolutionary Government." The manifesto was printed in the of.cial organ of the Soviet without comment or objection, as though the question were a purely academic one. But the leading Bolsheviks themselves also regarded their slogans as purely demonstrative. They behaved not like representatives of a proletarian party preparing an independent struggle for power, but like the left wing of a democracy, which, having announced its principles, intended for an inde.nite time to play the part of loyal opposition.

Sukhanov a.s.serts that at the sitting of the Executive Committee on March 1 the central question at issue was merely as to the conditions of the handing over of power. Against the thing itself-the formation of a bourgeois government-not one voice was raised, notwith-standing that out of 39 members of the Executive Committee, 11 were Bolsheviks or their adherents, and moreover three members of the Bolshevik centre, Zalutsky, Shliapnikov and Molotov, were present at the sitting.

In the Soviet on the next day, according to the report of Shliapnikov himself, out of 400 deputies present, only 19 voted against the transfer of power to the bourgeoisie-and this although there were already 40 in the Bolshevik faction. The voting itself pa.s.sed off in a purely formal parliamentary manner, without any clear counter-proposition from the Bolsheviks, without con.ict, and without any agitation whatever in the Bolshevik press.

204.

On the 4th of March the Bureau of the Bolshevik Central Committee adopted a resolu-tion on the counter-revolutionary character of the Provisional Government, and the neces-sity of steering a course towards the democratic dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat and the peas-antry. The Petrograd committee, rightly regarding this resolution as academic-since it gave no directives for to-day's action-approached the problem from the opposite angle. "Tak-ing cognisance of the resolution on the Provisional Government adopted by the Soviet," it announces that "it will not oppose the power of the Provisional Government in so far as," etc.... In essence this was the position of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries-only moved back to the second line trenches. This openly opportunist resolution of the Petrograd Committee contradicted only in a formal way the resolution of the Central Com-mittee, whose academic character had meant nothing politically but putting up with an accomplished fact.

This readiness to submit silently, or with reservations, to the government of the bour-geoisie did not have by any means the entire sympathy of the party. The Bolshevik workers met the Provisional Government from the .rst as a hostile rampart unexpectedly grown up in their path. The Vyborg Committee held meetings of thousands of workers and soldiers, which almost unanimously adopted resolutions on the necessity for a seizure of power by the soviets. An active partic.i.p.ant in this agitation, Dingelstedt, testi.es: "There was, not one meeting, not one workers' meeting, which would have voted down such a resolution from us if there had only been somebody to present it." The Mensheviks and Social Rev-olutionaries were afraid in those .rst days to appear openly before audiences of workers and soldiers with their formulation of the question of power. A resolution of the Vyborg workers, in view of its popularity, was printed and pasted up as a placard. But the Petro-grad Committee put an absolute ban upon this resolution, and the Vyborg workers were compelled to submit.

On the question of the social content of the revolution and prospects of its development, the position of the Bolshevik Party A revolutionary conception without a revolutionary will is like a watch with a broken spring. Kamenev was always behind the time-or rather beneath the tasks-of the revolution. But the absence of a broad political conception condemns the most wilful revolutionise to indecisiveness in the presence of vast and complicated events. Stalin, the empiric, was open to alien in.uences not on the side of will but on the side of intellect. Thus it was that this publicist without decision, and this organise without intellectual horizon, carried Bolshevism in March 1917 to the very boundaries of Menshevism. Stalin proved even less capable than Kamenev of developing an independent position in the Executive Committee, which he entered as a representative of the party. There is to be found in its reports and its press not one proposal, announcement, or protest, in which Stalin expressed the Bolshe-vik point of view in opposition to the fawning of the "democracy" at the feet of liberalism. Sukhanov says in his Notes of the Revolution: "Among the 1 Bolsheviks, besides Kamenev, there appeared in the Executive Committee in those days Stalin. . . . During the time of his modest activity in the Executive Committee he gave me the impression-and not only me-of a grey spot which would sometimes give out a dim and inconsequential light. There is really nothing more to be said about him." Although Sukhanov obviously under-estimates Stalin as a whole, he nevertheless correctly describes his political characterlessness in the Executive Committee of the Compromisers.

On the 14th of March the manifesto "to the people of the whole world," interpreting the victory of the February revolution in the interests of the Entente, and signifying the triumph of a new republican social patriotism of the French stamp, was adopted by the Soviet unanimously. That meant a considerable success for Kamenev and Stalin, but one evidently attained without much struggle. Pravda spoke of it as a " conscious compromise between different tendencies represented in the Soviet." It is necessary to add that this compromise involved a direct break with the tendency of Lenin, which was not represented in the Soviet at all.

Kamenev, a member of the emigrant editorial staff of the central organ, Stalin, a member of the Central Committee, and Muranov, a deputy in the Duma who had also returned from Siberia, removed the old editors of Pravda, who had occupied a too "left " position, and on the 15th of March, relying on their somewhat problematical rights, took the paper into their own hands. In the programme announcement of the new editors.h.i.+p, it was declared that the Bolsheviks would decisively support the Provisional Government "in so far as it struggles against reaction or counter-revolution." The new editors expressed themselves no less categorically upon the question of war: While he German army obeys its emperor, the Russian soldier must stand .rmly at his post answering bullet with bullet and sh.e.l.l with sh.e.l.l." "Our slogan is not the meaningless 'down with war.' Our slogan is pressure upon the Provisional Government with the aim of compelling it . . . to make an attempt to induce all the warring countries to open immediate negotiations . . . and until then every man remains at his .ghting post! " Both the idea and its formulation are those of the defensists. This programme of pressure upon an imperialist government with the aim of "inducing" it to adopt a peace-loving form of activity, was the programme of Kautsky in Germany, Jean Longuet in France, MacDonald in England. It was anything but the programme of Lenin, who was calling for the overthrow of imperialist rule. Defending itself against the patriotic press, Pravda went even farther "All 'defeatism,' " it said, " or rather what an undiscriminating press protected by the czar's, censors.h.i.+p has branded with that name, died at the moment when the .rst revolutionary regiment appeared on the streets of Petrograd." This was a direct abandonment of Lenin. "Defeatism" was not invented by a hostile press under the protection of a censors.h.i.+p, it was proclaimed by Lenin in the formula: "The defeat of Russia is the lesser evil." The appearance of the .rst revolutionary regiment, and even the overthrow of the monarchy, did not alter the imperialist character of the war. "The day of the .rst issue of the transformed Pravda," says Shliapnikov, was a day of rejoicing for the defensists. The whole Tauride Palace, from the business men in the committee of the State Duma to the very heart of the revolutionary democracy, the Executive Committee, was brimful of one piece of news: the Victory of the moderate and reasonable Bolsheviks over the extremists. In the Executive Committee itself they met us with venomous smiles. . . . When that number of Pravda was received in the factories it produced a complete bewilderment among the members of the party and its sympathisers, and a sarcastic satisfaction among its enemies.... The indignation in the party locals was enormous, and when the proletarians found out that Pravda had been seized by three former editors arriving from Siberia they demanded their expulsion from the party." Pravda was soon compelled to print a sharp protest from the Vyborg district: " If the paper does not want to lose the con.dence of the workers, it must and will bring the light of revolutionary consciousness, no matter how painful it may be, to the bourgeois owls." These protests from below compelled the editors to become more cautious in their expressions, but did not change their policy. Even the .rst article of Lenin which got there from abroad pa.s.sed by the minds of the editors. They were steering a rightward course all along the line. " In our agitation," writes Dingelstedt, a representative of the left wing, " we had to take up the principle of the dual power . . . and demonstrate the inevitability of this roundabout road to that same worker and soldier ma.s.s which during two weeks of intensive political life had been educated in a wholly different understanding of its tasks."

The policy of the party throughout the whole country naturally followed that of Pravda. In many soviets resolutions about fundamental problems were now adopted unanimously: the Bolsheviks simply bowed down to the Soviet majority. At a conference of the sovi-ets of the Moscow region the Bolsheviks joined in the resolution of the social patriots on the war. And .nally at the All-Russian Conference of the representatives of 82 soviets at the end of March and the beginning of April, the Bolsheviks voted for the of.cial resolu-tion on the question of power, which was defended by Dan. This extraordinary political rapprochement with the Mensheviks caused a widespread tendency towards uni.cation. In the provinces the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks entered into united organisations. The Kamenev-Stalin faction was steadily converting itself into a left .ank of the so-called rev-olutionary democracy, and was taking part in the mechanics of parliamentary "pressure" in the couloirs upon the bourgeoisie, supplementing this with a similar, pressure upon the democracy.

The part of the Central Committee which lived abroad and the Central Organ, The Social Democrat, had been the spiritual centre of the party. Lenin, with Zinoviev as a.s.sistant, had conducted the whole work of leaders.h.i.+p. The most responsible secretarial duties were ful.lled by Lenin's Wife, Krupskaia. In the practical work this small centre relied upon the support of a few score of Bolshevik emigrants. During the war their isolation from Russia became the more unbearable as the military police of the Entente drew its circle tighter and tighter. The revolutionary explosion they had so long and tensely awaited caught them unawares. England categorically refused to the emigrant internationalists, of whom she had kept a careful list, visa to Russia. Lenin was raging in his Zurich cage, seeking a way out. Among a hundred plans that were talked over, one was to travel on the pa.s.sport of a deaf-and-dumb Scandinavian. at the same time Lenin did not miss any chance to make his voice heard from Switzerland. On March 6 he telegraphed through Stockholm to Petrograd: "Our tactic; absolute lack of con.dence; no support to the new government; suspect Kerensky especially; arming of proletariat the sole guarantee; immediate elections to the Petrograd Duma; no rapprochement with other parties." In this directive, only the suggestion about elections to the Duma instead of the Soviet, had an episodic character and soon dropped out of sight. The other points, expressed with telegraphic incisiveness, fully indicate the general direction of the policy to be pursued. At the same time Lenin begins to send to Pravda his Letters from Afar which, although based upon fragments of foreign information const.i.tute a .nished a.n.a.lysis of the revolutionary situation. The news in the papers soon enabled him to conclude that the Provisional government, with the direct a.s.sistance not only of Kerensky but of Cheidze, was not unsuccessfully deceiving the workers, out the imperialist war for a war of defence. On the March, through friends in Stockholm, he wrote a letter Red with alarm. "Our party would disgrace itself for ever, kill itself politically, if it took part in such deceit.... I would choose an immediate split with no matter whom in our party rather than surrender to social patriotism. . . . After this apparently impersonal threat-having de.nite people in mind however-Lenin adjures: "Kamenev must understand that a world historic responsibility rests upon him." Kamenev is named here because it is a question of political principle. If Lenin had had a practical militant problem in mind, he would have been more likely to mention Stalin. But in just those hours Lenin was striving to communicate the tensity of his will to Petrograd across smoking Europe, Kamenev with the co-operation of Stalin was turning sharply toward social patriotism.

Various schemes-disguises, false whiskers, foreign or false pa.s.sports-were cast aside one after the other as impossible. And meanwhile the idea of travelling through Germany became more and more concrete. This plan frightened the majority emigrants-and not only those who were patriotic, either. Martov and the other Mensheviks could not make up their m to adopt the bold action of Lenin, and continued to knock in vain on the doors of the Entente. Later on even many of Bolsheviks repented of their journey through Germany, in view of the dif.culties caused by the "sealed train" in the sphere of agitation. From the beginning Lenin never shut his eyes to those future dif.culties. Krupskaia wrote not long before the departure from Zurich: "Of course the patriots will raise an outcry in Russia, but for that we must be prepared. " The question stood as follows: either stay in Switzerland or travel through Germany. There was no other choice. Could Lenin have hesitated for a moment? Just one month Martov Axelrod and the others had to follow in his steps.

In the organisation of this unusual trip through hostile territory in war time, the funda-mental traits of Lenin as statesman expressed themselves-boldness of conception a metic-ulous carefulness in its ful.lment. Inside that great revolutionist there dwelt a pedantic notary-one who knew his function, however, and drew up his paper at the moment when it might help in the overthrow of all such notarial acts for ever. The conditions of the journey through German were worked out with extraordinary care in this unique international treaty between the editorial staff of a revolutionary paper and the empire of the Hohenzollerns. Lenin demanded complete extraterritoriality during the transit: no supervision of the per-sonnel of the pa.s.sengers, their pa.s.sports or baggage. No single person should have the right to enter the train throughout the journey. (Hence the legend of the "scaled" train.) On their part, the emigrant group agreed to insist upon the release from Russia of a corresponding number of German and Austro-Hungarian civil prisoners.

At the same time a joint declaration was drawn up with several foreign revolutionises. "The Russian internationalists who are now going to Russia in order to serve there the cause of the revolution, will help us arouse the proletariat of other countries, especially of Germany and Austria, against their governments. So speaks the protocol signed by Loriot and Gilbeaux from France, Paul Levy from Germany, Platten from Switzerland, by Swedish left deputies and others. On those conditions and with those precautions, thirty Russian emigrants left Switzerland at the end of March. A rather explosive trainload even among the loads of those war days!

In his farewell letter to the Swiss workers Lenin reminded them of the declaration of the central organ of the Bolsheviks in the autumn of 1915: If the revolution brings to power in Russia a republican government which wants to continue the imperialist war, the Bolsheviks will be against the defence of the republican Fatherland. Such a situation has now arisen. "Our slogan is no support to the government of Guchkov-Miliukov." With those words Lenin now entered the territory of the revolution.

However, the members of the Provisional Government did not see any ground for alarm. Nabokov writes: "At one of the March sessions of the Provisional Government, during a recess, in a long conversation about the increasing propaganda of the Bolsheviks, Kerensky exclaimed with his usual hysterical giggle: 'Just you wait, Lenin himself is coming, then the real thing will begin! ' " Kerensky was right. The real thing would begin only then.

However the ministers, according to Nabokov, were not greatly disturbed: "The very fact of his having appealed to Germany will so undermine the authority of Lenin that we need not fear him." As was to be expected, the ministers were exceedingly perspicacious.

Friendly disciples went to meet Lenin in Finland. "We had hardly got into the car and sat down," writes Raskolnikov, a young naval of.cer and a Bolshevik," when Vladimir Llych .ung at Kamenev: 'What's this you're writing in Pravda? We saw several numbers and gave it to you good and proper. ' " Such was their meeting after a separation of several years. But even so it was a friendly meeting.

The Petrograd Committee, with the co-operation of the military organisation, mobilised several thousand workers and soldiers for a triumphal welcome to Lenin. A friendly ar-moured car division detailed all their cars to meet him, The committee decided to go to the station with the armoured cars. The revolution had already created a partiality for that type of monster, so useful to have on your side in the streets of a city.

The description of the of.cial meeting which took place in the so-called "Czar's Room" of the Finland station, const.i.tutes a very lively page in the many-volumed and rather faded memoirs of Sukhanov. "Lenin walked, or rather ran, into the 'Czar's Room' in a round hat, his face chilled, and a luxurious bouquet in his arms. Hurrying to the middle of the room, he stopped still in front of Cheidze as though he had run into a completely, unexpected obstacle. And here Cheidze, not abandoning his previous melancholy look, p.r.o.nounced the following speech of greeting, carefully, preserving not only the spirit and voice of a moral instructor: ' Comrade Lenin, in the name of the Petrograd Soviet and the whole revolution. We welcome you to Russia ... but we consider the that the chief task of the revolutionary democracy at present is to defend our revolution against every kind of attack both from within and from without ... We hope that you will join us in striving towards this goal.' Cheidze ceased. I was dismayed with the unexpectedness of it. But Lenin, it seemed, knew well how to deal with all that. He stood there looking as though what was happening did not concern him in the least, glanced from one side to the other, looked over the sur-rounding public, and even examined the ceiling to the 'Czar's Room' while rearranging his bouquet (which harmonised rather badly with his whole .gure), and .nally, having turned completely away from the delegates of the Executive Committee, 'answered' thus: 'Dear comrades, soldiers, sailors and workers, I am happy to greet in you the victorious Russian revolution, to greet you as the advance guard of the international proletarian army, . . . The hour is not far when, at the summons of our comrade Karl Liebknecht, the people will turn their weapons against their capitalist exploiters. . . . The Russian revolution achieved by you has opened a new, epoch, Long live the world wide socialist revolution!' "

Sukhanov is right-the bouquet harmonised badly with the .gure of Lenin, and doubt-less hindered and embarra.s.sed him with its inappropriateness to the austere background of events. In general, as it happens, Lenin did not like .owers in a bouquet. But doubtless he was far more embarra.s.sed by that of.cial and hypocritical Sunday school greeting in the parade room of a station. Cheidze was better than his speech of greeting. He was a little timid of Lenin. But they undoubtedly had told him that it was necessary to pull up on the "sectarian" from the very beginning. To supplement Cheidze's speech, which had demon-strated the pitiable level of the leaders.h.i.+p, a young naval commander' speaking in the name of the sailors, was brilliant enough to express the hope that Lenin might become a member of the Provisional Government. Thus the February revolution, garrulous and .abby and still rather stupid, greeted the man who had arrived with a resolute determination to set it straight both in thought and in will. Those .rst impressions, multiplying tenfold the alarm which he had brought with him, produced a feeling of protest in Lenin which it was dif.cult to restrain. How much more satisfactory to roll up his sleeves! Appealing from Cheidze to the sailors and workers, from the defence of the Fatherland to international revolution, from the Provisional Government to Liebknecht, Lenin merely gave a short rehearsal there at the station of his whole future policy.

And nevertheless that clumsy revolution instantly and heartily took its leader into its bosom. The soldiers demanded that Lenin climb up on one of the armoured cars, and he had to obey. The oncoming night made the procession especially impressive. The lights on the other armoured cars being dimmed, the night was stabbed by the sharp beam from the projector of the machine on which Lenin rode. It sliced out from the darkness of the street sections of excited workers, soldiers, sailors-the same ones who had achieved the great revolution and then let the power slip through their .ngers. The band ceased playing every so often, in order to let Lenin repeat or vary his speech before new listeners. "That triumphal march was brilliant," says Sukhanov, " and even somewhat symbolic."

In the palace of Kshesinskaia, Bolshevik headquarters in the satin nest of a court ballerina-that combination must have amused Lenin's always lively irony-greetings began again. This was too much. Lenin endured the .ood of eulogistic speeches like an impatient pedes-trian waiting in a doorway for the rain to stop. He felt the sincere joyfulness at his arrival, but was bothered by its verboseness. The very tone of the of.cial greetings seemed to him imitative, affected-in a word borrowed from the petty bourgeois democracy, declamatory, sentimental and false. He saw that the revolution, before having even de.ned its problems and tasks, had already created its tiresome etiquette. He smiled a good-natured reproach, looked at his watch, and from time to time doubtless gave an unrestrained yawn. The echo of the last greeting had not died away, when this unusual guest let loose upon that audience a cataract of pa.s.sionate thought which at times sounded almost like a las.h.i.+ng. At that pe-riod the stenographic art was not yet open to Bolshevism. n.o.body made notes. All were too absorbed in what was happening. The speeches have not been preserved. There remain only general impressions in the memoirs of the listeners. And these have been edited by the lapse of time; rapture has been added to them, and fright washed away. The fundamental impression made by Lenin's speech even among those nearest to him was one of fright. All the accepted formulas, which with innumerable repet.i.tion had acquired in the course of a month a seemingly unshakeable permanence, were exploded one after another before the eyes of that audience. The short Leninist reply at the station, tossed out over the head of the startled Cheidze, was here developed into a two hour speech addressed directly to the Petrograd cadres of Bolshevism.

The non-party socialist, Sukhanov, was accidentally present this meeting as a guest-admitted by the good-natured Kamenev, although Lenin was intolerant of such indulgences. Thanks to this we have a description made by an outsider half-hostile and half-ecstatic-of the .rst meeting of Lenin with the Petersburg Bolsheviks.

I will never forget that thunderlike speech, startling and amazing not only to me, a heretic accidentally dropped in, but also to the faithful, all of them. I a.s.sert that n.o.body there had expected anything of the kind. It seemed as if all the elements and the spirit of universal destruction had risen from their lairs, knowing neither barriers nor doubts nor personal dif.culties nor personal considerations, to hover through the banquet chambers of Kshesinskaia above the heads of the bewitched disciples."

Personal considerations and dif.culties-to Sukhanov that meant for the most part the editorial waverings of the Novy Zhizn circle having tea with Maxim Gorky Lenin's con-siderations went deeper. Not the elements were hovering in that banquet hall, but human thoughts-and they were not embarra.s.sed by the elements, but were trying to understand in order to control them. But never mind-the impression is clearly conveyed.

"On the journey here with my comrades," said Lenin, according to Sukhanov's report-" I was expecting they would take us directly from the station to Peter and Paul. We are far from that, it seems. But let us not give up the hope that it will happen, that we shall not escape it."

For the others at that time the development of the revolution was identical, with a strengthening of the democracy; for Lenin the nearest prospect led straight to the Peter and Paul prison-fortress. It seemed a sinister joke. But Lenin was not joking, nor was the revolution joking.

"He swept aside legislative agrarian reform," complains Sukhanov, "along with all the rest of the policies of the Soviet. He spoke for an organised seizure of the land by the peasants, not antic.i.p.ating ... any governmental power at all."

"We don't need any parliamentary republic. We don't need any bourgeois democracy. We don't need any government except the Soviet of workers', soldiers', and farmhands' deputies! ' "

At the same time Lenin sharply separated himself from Soviet majority, tossing them over into the camp of the enemy. That alone was enough in those days to make his listeners dizzy! "

"Only the Zimmerwald Left stands guard over the proletarian interests and the world revolution" -thus Sukhanov reports, with indignation, the thoughts of Lenin, "The rest are the same old opportunist speaking pretty words but in reality betraying the cause of socialism and the work ma.s.ses."

Raskolnikov supplements Sukhanov: "He decisively a.s.sailed the tactics pursued before his arrival by the ruling party groups and by individual comrades. The most responsible workers were here. But for them too the words of Ilych were a veritable revelation. They laid down a Rubicon between the tactics of yesterday and to-day," That Rubicon, as we shall see was not bid down at once.

There was no discussion of the speech. All were too much astounded, and each wanted a chance to collect his thoughts. I came out on the street," concludes Sukhanov, "feeling as though on that night I had been fogged over the head with a .ail. Only one thing was clear: There was no place for me, a non-part man beside Lenin!"

Indeed not!

The next day Lenin presented to the party a short written exposition of his views, which under the name of Theses of April 4 has become one of the most important doc.u.ments of the revolution. The theses expressed simple thoughts in simple words comprehensible to all: The republic which has issued from the February revolution is not our republic, and the war which it is now raging is not our war, The task of the Bolsheviks is to overthrow the imperialist government. But this government rests upon the support of the Social Revolu-tionaries and Mensheviks, who in turn are supported by the trustfulness of the ma.s.ses of the people. We are in the minority. In these circ.u.mstances there can be no talk of violence from our side. We must teach the ma.s.ses not to trust the Compromisers and defensists. "We must patiently explain." The success of this policy, dictated by the whole existing situation, is a.s.sured, and it will bring us to the dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat, and so beyond the boundaries of the bourgeois rgime. We will break absolutely with capital, publish its secret treaties, and summon the workers of the whole world to cast loose from the bour-geoisie and put an end to the war. We are beginning the international revolution. Only its success will con.rm our success, and guarantee a transition to the socialist rgime.

These theses of Lenin were published in his own name and his only, The central insti-tutions of the party met them with a hostility softened only by bewilderment. n.o.body-not one organisation, group or individual-af.xed his signature to them. Even Zinoviev, arriving with Lenin from abroad, where for ten years his ideas had been forming under the imme-diate and, daily in.uence of Lenin, silently stepped aside, Nor was this side-stepping a surprise to the teacher, who knew his closest disciple all too well.

Where Kamenev was a propagandist populariser, Zinoviev was an agitator, and indeed, to quote an expression of Lenin, "nothing but an agitator." He has not, in the .rst place, a suf.cient sense of responsibility to be a leader. But not only that. Lacking inner discipline, his mind is completely incapable of theoretical work, and his thought dissolve into formless intuitions of the agitator. Thanks to an exceptionally quick scent, he can catch out of the air whatever formulas are necessary to him-those which will exercise the most the most effective in.uence on the ma.s.ses. Both as journalist and orator he remains an agitator, with only this difference-that in his articles you usually see his weaker side, and in oral speech his stronger. Although far more bold and unbridled in agitation than any other Bolshevik, Zinoviev is even less capable than Kamenev of revolutionary initiative. He is, like all demagogues, indecisive. Pa.s.sing from the arena of factional debate to that of direct ma.s.s .ghting, Zinoviev almost involuntarily separated from his teacher.

There have been plenty of attempts of late years to prove that the April party crisis was a pa.s.sing and almost accidental confusion. They all go to pieces at .rst contact with the facts.

What we already know of the activity of the party in March reveals the deepest possible contradiction between Lenin and the Petersburg leaders.h.i.+p. This contradiction reached its highest intensity exactly at the moment of Lenin's arrival. Simultaneously with the All-Russian Conference of representatives, of 82 soviets, where Kamenev and Stalin voted for the resolution on sovereignty introduced by the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, there took place in Petrograd a party conference of Bolsheviks a.s.sembled from all over Russia. This conference, at the very end of which Lenin arrived, has an exceptional interest for anyone wis.h.i.+ng to characterize the mood and opinions of the party and all its upper layers as they issued from the war. A reading of the reports, to this day unpublished, fre-quently produces a feeling of amazement: is it possible that a party represented by these delegates will after seven months seize the power with an iron hand? A month had already pa.s.sed since the uprising-a long period for a revolution, as also for a war. Nevertheless opinions were not de.ned in the party on the most basic questions of the revolution. Ex-treme patriots such as Voitinsky, Eliava, and others, partic.i.p.ated in the conference alongside of those who considered themselves internationalists. The percentage of outspoken patri-ots, incomparably less than among the Mensheviks, was nevertheless considerable. The conference as a whole did not decide the question whether to break with its own patriots or unite with the patriots of Menshevism. In an interval between sessions of the Bolshe-vik conference there was held a united session of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks-delegates to the Soviet conference-to consider the war question. The most furious Menshevik-patriot, Lieber, announced at this session: "We must do away with the old division between Bol-shevik and Menshevik, and speak only of our att.i.tude toward the war." The Bolshevik, Voitinsky, hastened to proclaim his readiness to put his signature to every word of Lieber. All of them together, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, patriots and internationalists, were seek-ing a common formula for their att.i.tude to the war. The views of the Bolshevik conference undoubtedly found their most adequate expression in the report of Stalin on relations with the Provisional Government. It is necessary to introduce here the central thought of this speech, which, like the reports as a whole, is not yet published." The power has been de-cided between two organs of which neither one possesses full power. There is debate and struggle between them, and there ought to be. The roles have been divided. The Soviet has in fact taken the initiative in the revolutionary transformation; the Soviet is the revolution-ary leader of the insurrectionary people; an organ controlling the Provisional Government. And the Provisional Government has in fact taken the role of forti.er of the conquests of the revolutionary people. The Soviet mobilizes the forces, and controls. The Provisional Government, balking and confused, takes the role of forti.er of those conquests of the people, which they have already seized as a fact. This situation has disadvantageous, but also advantageous sides. It is not to our advantage at present to force events, hastening the process of repelling the bourgeois layers, who will in the future inevitably withdraw from us."

Transcending cla.s.s distinctions, the speaker portrays the relation between the bour-geoisie and the proletariat as a mere division of labour. The workers and soldiers achieve the revolution, Guchkov and Miliukov "fortify" it. We recognize here the traditional con-ception of the Mensheviks, incorrectly modelled after the events of 1789. This superinten-dent's approach to the historical process is exactly characteristic of the leaders of Menshe-vism, this handing out of instructions to various cla.s.ses and then patronisingly criticising their ful.llment. The idea that it is disadvantageous to hasten the withdrawal of the bour-geoisie from the revolution, has always been the guiding principle of the whole policy of the Mensheviks. Inaction this means blunting and weakening the movement of the ma.s.ses in order not to frighten away the liberal allies. And .nally, Stalin's conclusion as to the Provisional Government is wholly in accord with the equivocal formula of the Compro-misers: "In so far as the Provisional Government forti.es the steps of the revolution, in so far we must support it, but in so far as it is counter-revolutionary, support to the Provisional Government is not permissible."

Stalin's report was made on March 29. On the next day the of.cial spokesman of the Soviet conference, the non-party social democrat Steklov, defending the same conditional support to the Provisional Government, in the ardor of his eloquence painted such a pic-ture of the activity of the "forti.ers" of the revolution-opposition to social reforms, leaning towards monarchy, protection of counter-revolutionary forces, appet.i.te for annexation-that the Bolshevik conference recoiled in alarm from this formula of support. The right Bol-shevik Nogin declared: "The speech of Steklov has introduced one new thought: it is clear that we ought not now to talk about support, but about resistance." Skrypnik also arrived at the conclusion that since the speech of Steklov "many things have changed, there can be no more talk of supporting the government. There is a conspiracy of the Provisional Gov-ernment against the people and the revolution." Stalin, who a day before had been painting an idealistic picture of the "division of labour" between the government and the Soviet, felt obliged to eliminate this point about supporting the government. The short and super.cial discussion turned about the question whether to support the Provisional Government" in so far as," or only to support the revolutionary activities of the Provisional Government. The delegate from Saratov, Va.s.siliev, not untruthfully declared: "We all have the same att.i.tude to the Provisional Government." Krestinsky formulated the situation even more clearly: "As to practical action there is no disagreement between Stalin and Voitinsky." Notwithstanding the fact that Voitinsky went over to the Mensheviks immediately after the conference, Krestinsky was not very wrong. Although he eliminated the open mention of support, Stalin did not eliminate support. The only one who attempted to formulate the question in principle was Kra.s.sikov, one of those old Bolsheviks who had withdrawn from the party for a series of years, but now, weighed down with life's experience, was trying to return to its ranks.

Kra.s.sikov did not hesitate to seize the bull by the horns. Is this then a dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat you are about to inaugurate? he asked ironically. But the conference pa.s.sed over his irony, and along with it pa.s.sed over this question as one not deserving attention. The resolution of the conference summoned the revolutionary democracy to urge the Provisional Government toward "a most energetic struggle for the complete liquidation of the old rgime"-that is, gave the proletarian party the role of governess of the bourgeoisie.

The next day they considered the proposal of Tseretelli for a union of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Stalin was wholly in favour of the proposal: "We must do it. It is necessary to de.ne our proposal for a basis of union; union is possible on the basis of Zimmerwald-Kienthal." Molotov, who had been removed from the editors.h.i.+p of Pravda by Kamenev and Stalin because of the too radical line of the paper, spoke in opposition: Tseretelli wants to unite heterogeneous elements, he himself calls himself Zimmerwaldist; a union on that basis is wrong. But Stalin stuck to his guns: " There is no use running ahead and trying to forestall disagreements. There is no party life without disagreements. We will live down petty disagreements within the party." The whole struggle which Lenin had been carrying on during the war years against social patriotism and its paci.st disguise, was thus casually swept aside. In September 1916 Lenin had written through Shliapnikov to Petrograd with special insistence: "Conciliationism and consolidation is the worst thing for the workers' party in Russia, not only idiotism but ruin to the party.... We can rely only on those who halve understood the whole deceit involved in the idea of unity and whole necessity of a split with that brotherhood (Cheidze Co.) in Russia." This warning was not understood. Disagreements with Tseretelli, the leader of the ruling Soviet bloc, seemed to Stalin petty disagreements, which could be "lived down" within a common party. This furnishes the best criterion for an appraisal of the views held by Stalin at that time.

On April 4 Lenin appeared at the party conference. His speech, developing his "theses," pa.s.sed over the work of the conference like the wet sponge of a teacher erasing what had been written on the blackboard by a confused pupil.

"Why didn't you seize the power? " asked Lenin. At the Soviet conference not long before that, Steklov had confusedly explained the reasons for abstaining from the power: revolution is bourgeois-it is the .rst stage-the war, etc." That's nonsense," Lenin said. "The reason is that the proletariat was not suf.ciently conscious and not suf.ciently organised. That we have to acknowledge. The material force was in the hands of the proletariat, but the bourgeoisie was conscious and ready. That is the monstrous fact. But it is necessary to acknowledge it frankly, and say to the people straight out that we did not seize the power because we were unorganised and not conscious."

From the plane of pseudo-objectivism, behind which the political capitulators were hid-ing, Lenin s.h.i.+fted the whole question to the subjective plane. The proletariat did not seize the power in February because the Bolshevik Party was not equal to its objective task, and could not prevent the Compromises from expropriating the popular ma.s.ses politically for the; bene.t of the bourgeoisie.

The day before that, lawyer Kra.s.sikov had said challengingly: "If we think that the time has now come to realize the dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat, then we ought to pose the question that way. We unquestionably have the physical force for a seizure of power." The chairman at that time deprived Kra.s.sikov of the .oor on the ground that practical prob-lems were under discussion, and the question of dictators.h.i.+p was out of order. But Lenin thought that, as the sole practical question, the question of preparing the dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat was exactly in order. "The peculiarity of the present moment in Russia," he said in his theses, "consists in the transition from the .rst stage of the revolution, which gave the power to the bourgeoisie on account of the inadequate consciousness and organization of the proletariat, to its second stage which must give the power to the proletariat and the poor layers of the peasantry." The conference, following the lead of Pravda, had limited the task of the revolution to a democratic transformation to be realized through the Con-st.i.tuent a.s.sembly. As against this, Lenin declared that "life and the revolution will push the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly into the background. A dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat exists, but n.o.body knows what to do with it."

The delegates exchanged glances. They whispered to each other that Ilych had stayed too long abroad, had not had time, to look around and familiarize himself with things. But the speech of Stalin on the ingenious division of labour between the government and the Soviet sank out of sight once and for ever. Stalin himself remained silent. From now on he will have to be silent for a long time. Kamenev alone will man the defences.

Lenin had already given warning in letters from Geneva that he was ready to break with anybody who made concessions on the question of war, chauvinism and compromise with the bourgeoisie. Now, face to face with the leading circles of the party he opens an attack all along the line. But at the beginning he does not name a single Bolshevik by name. If he has need of a living model of equivocation and half-wayness, he points his .nger at the non-party men, or at Steklov or Cheidze. That was the customary method of Lenin: not to nail anybody down to his position too soon, to give the prudent a chance to withdraw from the battle in good season and thus weaken at once the future ranks of his open enemies. Kamenev and Stalin had thought that in partic.i.p.ating in the war after February, the soldiers and workers were defending the revolution. Lenin thinks that, as before, the soldier and the worker take part in the war as the conscripted slaves of capital. "Even our Bolsheviks," he says, narrowing the circle around his antagonists, "show con.dence in the government. Only the fumes of the revolution can explain that. That is the death of socialism.... If that's your position, our ways part. I prefer to remain in the minority." That was not a mere oratorical threat; it was a clear path thought through to the end.

Although naming neither Kamenev nor Stalin, Lenin was obliged to name the paper: "Pravda demands of the government that it renounce annexation. To demand from the government of the capitalists that it renounce annexation is nonsense, .agrant mockery." Restrained indignation here breaks out with a high note. But the orator immediately takes himself in hand: he wants to say no less than is necessary, but also no more. Incidentally and in pa.s.sing, Lenin gives incomparable rules for revolutionary statesmans.h.i.+p: "When the ma.s.ses announce that they do not want conquests, I believe them. When Guchkov and Lvov say they do not want conquests, they are deceivers! When a worker says that he wants the defense of the country, what speaks in him is the instinct of the oppressed." This criterion, to call it by its right name, seems simple as life itself. But the dif.culty is to call it by its right name in time.

On the question of the appeal of the Soviet "to the people of the whole world "-which caused the liberal paper Rech at one time to declare that the theme of paci.sm is developing among us into an ideology common to the Allies-Lenin expressed himself more clearly and succinctly: "What is peculiar to Russia is the gigantically swift transition from wild violence to the most delicate deceit."

"This appeal," wrote Stalin concerning the manifesto, "if it reaches the broad ma.s.ses (of the West), will undoubtedly recall hundreds and thousands of workers to the forgotten slogan 'Proletarians of all Countries Unite! ' "

"The appeal of the Soviet," objects Lenin, "-there isn't a word in it imbued with cla.s.s consciousness. There is nothing to it but phrases." This doc.u.ment, the pride of the home-grown Zimmerwaldists, is in Lenin's eyes merely one of the weapons of the most delicate deceit."

Up to Lenin's arrival Pravda had never even mentioned the Zimmerwald left. Speaking of the International, it never indicated which International. Lenin called this "the Kaut-skyanism of Pravda." "In Zimmerwald and Kienthal," he declared at a party conference, " the Centrists predominated. . . . We declare that we created a left and broke with the centre. . . . The left Zimmerwald tendency exists in all the countries of the world. The ma.s.ses ought to realize that socialism has split throughout the world ......

Three days before that Stalin had announced at that same conference his readiness to live down differences with Tseretelli on the basis of Zimmerwald-Kienthal-that is, on the basis of Kautskyanism. "I hear that in Russia there is a trend toward consolidation," said Lenin. "Consolidation with the defensists -that is betrayal of socialism. I think it would be better to stand alone like Liebknecht-one against a hundred and ten." The accusation of betrayal of socialism-for the present still without naming names-is not here merely a strong word; it fully expresses the att.i.tude of Lenin toward those Bolsheviks who were extending a .nger to the social patriots. In opposition to Stalin who thought it was possible to unite with the Mensheviks, Lenin thought it was unpermissible to share with them any longer the name of Social Democrat. "Personally and speaking for myself alone," he said, "I propose that we change the name of the party, that we call it the Communist Party." " Personally and speaking for myself alone "-that means that n.o.body, not one of the members of the conference, agreed to that symbolic gesture of ultimate break with the Second International.

"You are afraid to go back on your old memories?" says the orator to the embarra.s.sed, bewildered and partly indignant delegates. But the time has come "to change our linen; we've got to take off the dirty s.h.i.+rt and put on clean." And he again insists: "Don't hang on