The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement Part 1

The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement.

by Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper, Frank Alfred Golder, Robert Joseph Kerner.

PREFACE

Whatever may be its final outcome the Russian Revolution of 1917 bids fair to remain one of the great events of modern history. Its consequences are still immeasurable and today to many they appear as fraught with menace as with hope. They have within less than a year led a mighty empire to the brink of dissolution and no man can foretell where and how the process will end for worse or for better. The Russian Revolution saved the Central Powers at the moment when their prospect looked darkest, but on the other hand it facilitated the entrance of the United States into the war as one for liberty and democracy. Time has yet to show whether the loss or the gain has been the greater for the Allied cause and for mankind. It will be paid for at a heavy price but our hope cannot easily be shaken that sooner or later an event so full of promise for the misruled millions of the autocratic empire of the Tsar will mark a step forward, not backward, in the progress of the world. The whole story of the sudden out-break in Petrograd which in little more than a day swept away the fabric of imperial government will not soon be told, if ever. All real information on the subject is timely and valuable. We need such studies as those contained in the present volume, in order that we may understand what has happened, and why it has happened.

The rise of the modern Jugo-Slav movement offers us a very different picture. The subject and even the name are new to most people, the scale is much smaller; the events have been less dramatic. But the unconquerable resistance which a small disjointed nationality has offered throughout the ages to ill fortune, oppression, and to attempts to obliterate it entirely arouses our admiration. The movement too was intimately connected with the outbreak of the present world war which cannot be understood without taking it into account. It still represents only an ardent hope for the future but when the day of peace and justice comes no permanent allotment can be made of the lands east of the Adriatic that shall not give it at least some satisfaction.

ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE.

MARCH 18, 1918. THE ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUALS IN THE LIBERATING MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA

By Alexander Petrunkevitch

In an interview dated November 21, and published in the _New York Times_ in a special cable from Petrograd, Leon Trotzky in defending the att.i.tude of the people toward the Bolsheviki _coup d'etat_ is reported to have said substantially the following: "All the bourgeoisie is against us. The greater part of the intellectuals is against us or hesitating, awaiting a final outcome. The working cla.s.s is wholly with us. The army is with us. The peasants, with the exception of exploiters, are with us. The Workmen's and Soldiers' government is a government of workingmen, soldiers, and peasants against the capitalists and landowners."

On the other hand my father, Ivan Petrunkevitch, floorleader of the Const.i.tutional Democratic party in the first Duma and since that time owner and publisher of the Petrograd daily _Rech_ writes in a private letter dated June 12: "... the present real government, i. e., the Council of Soldiers' and Workmen's Deputies, whose leaders are neither soldiers nor workmen, but intellectuals, etc." Nothing has happened during the months intervening between the letter and the interview to change the composition of the Council appreciably. It is true that Kerensky who was vice-president of the Council has been meanwhile deposed; that Tshcheidze had to relinquish the presidency in the Council to Trotzky long before Kerensky's downfall; but the leaders of the Council still are intellectuals, are well educated men, some of them well known writers on political and economic questions and withal very different from the ma.s.ses which they lead and which they purport to represent. In justice to those who had to give way to the Lenine-Trotzky crowd of supporters, I wish to state emphatically that I do not want to put them on the same plane. Tseretelli, Plekhanov, Tshcheidze, and their co-workers are men of great courage, high ideals, and personal integrity. On the other hand their successors in power are men of a totally different type. The integrity of many of their number has been openly questioned, the accusations, published & broadcast, remained unanswered, and no suit for libel was brought by the men thus accused.

Lenine was put under suspicion of having accepted German help and of having planned with Germany's agents the disorganization of the Russian army. It has been even charged on apparently good evidence that the leaflets distributed at the front were printed with German money.

Trotzky was accused by Miliukov in the _Rech_ (June 7) of having received $10,000 from German-Americans for the purpose of organizing the attack on Kerensky's government. Ganetsky was forced to leave Denmark by an order of the Danish government, having been convicted of dishonest dealings in a Danish court. Zinoviev is accused of forgery. Others are also under suspicion which has been only increased by the arrest and imprisonment of Burtzev who is known for his untiring efforts to hunt down traitors to the cause of the Russian Revolution and who had important evidence in his possession. It is also a remarkable fact that the majority of the present leaders are known broadly only under a.s.sumed names. Lenine's true name is Uljanov, Trotzky's--Bronstein, Zinoviev's--Apfelbaum, Sukhanov's--Gimmer, Kamenev's--Rosenfeld, Steklov's--Nakhamkis, and a number of others whose ident.i.ty is not even always known. Trotzky's a.s.sertion that the Workmen's and Soldiers'

Government is a government of workingmen, soldiers, and peasants is therefore nothing but a perversion of facts.

There is, however, nothing extraordinary in the fact itself that intellectuals are the real leaders of all Russian parties. Better education and wider knowledge of the affairs of the world have always appealed to the dark ma.s.ses who realize only dimly their own desires and grasp at any concrete formulation of reforms which contains a tangible promise or seems to express those desires. At the same time they often put their own meaning into the words of their leaders, which is true even of factory workers in the larger cities. As for the peasants, representing about 90 per cent of the entire population, they are still very poorly educated, questions of national import remain outside their horizon, and even their language is not the language of the educated Russian, inasmuch as it lacks the rich vocabulary of modern life and is devoid of the very conceptions to which this vast treasury of words applies. Their mind, great as it is in its potentialities, still moves in the furrows of familiar ideas abhorring things too much at variance with inherited traditions or actual experience. Yet in the turmoil of revolutionary activity the peasants are going to have their say and may become the decisive factor, because they are voters and are casting their votes for those leaders whose words they believe to contain the greatest promise and the least menace of a general disruption of their accustomed mode of life.

We are thus brought back, for the present at least, to the necessity of recognizing that even the state of anarchy under which Russia is laboring, even the rule of the renowned proletariat so much trumpeted about by Lenine and Trotzky, is in reality the work of intellectuals, an answer of the ma.s.ses to the call of their leaders, a groping for principles beyond their perception.

It suffices a very casual examination of the programs and resolutions of various political parties to see the truth of this statement. They are expressive of the opinions of the leaders, not of the ma.s.ses; are couched in the language of the educated Russian, not in that of the workman or peasant and, except for the concluding slogans like "Peace, Bread, and Land," are alien to the very spirit of the ma.s.ses. In this respect all parties are confronted with the same difficulty since all strive to get the support of the ma.s.ses, yet have to express principles evolved through careful and extensive study of national, political, and economic problems, strange to the uneducated mind. For the same reason the methods of surmounting the difficulty differ in many respects and are characteristic of each party.

The Conservative Intellectuals of Russia early realized the necessity of meeting the peasant on his own ground and the advantage of appealing to him in his own language. The idea of a benevolent ruler, an all-suffering motherland, and an all-unifying church exercised a powerful appeal upon the imagination, for a long time superseding and forcing into the background the growing, elemental, and unfulfilled longing for more land. The ideology of a perfect monarchy is so simple and its shortcomings so easily attributable to dishonesty of officials, that it answered the peasant's thoughts as long as he was not able to see the folly of distinguis.h.i.+ng between the system and its realization, but separated in his mind the image of his loving monarch from the cruel reality of everyday life as he still distinguishes between the faith and the priest. The great mistake of all conservatives is that they seek to bring about a state of perfect justice by improving only the quality of the ruling body without changing the conditions of life of the ruled ma.s.s. Yet even so the Conservatives had quite a following among the peasants up to the time of the revolution of 1917 and in a way may still have a future before them.

The Octoberists find no support in the ma.s.ses and do not make any serious attempt to gain it. They frankly acknowledged themselves as the party of industry and trade, having no wider interests at heart than the maintenance of order and law throughout the country. Their leaders were forced into a revolutionary att.i.tude only at the time when there was danger of a universal collapse of Russia if the tsar's government persisted, and they may be forced to join in a counter-revolution, if their interests are again endangered. Their ideology is that of a capitalistic cla.s.s and their power depends entirely on the future development of industry and trade in Russia. For the present they are nowhere. Unable to find a new basis for their activity in place of cla.s.s interest, they lack unity of purpose and are deserted by their own former supporters among their employees. Trade and industry are disorganized and the party may never be resurrected.

The Const.i.tutional Democrats are in this respect better off. They find their support chiefly among more or less educated people of various pursuits: lawyers, bankers, brokers, journalists, teachers, artists, scientists, etc. Their program embraces the interests of all cla.s.ses and demands political, judicial, economic, industrial and agrarian legislation of a very radical and extensive kind. Their horizon of vision includes the sufferings and aspirations of the often incongruous elements of the vast whole, but their ideology is still based on the long outworn idealistic capitalism and for this reason alone does not and cannot appeal to not-owning cla.s.ses. Their agrarian program is in this respect the most striking example. It is worked out in great detail and is aimed at a betterment of the condition of peasants without deep injury to the present landowners. It recognizes the right of the peasant to more land, it provides for future state owners.h.i.+p of land to prevent it from falling into wrong hands, but does not condemn the principle of landowners.h.i.+p, nor the injustice of present owners.h.i.+p, and for that reason elaborates a method of compensation for compulsorily alienated land through universal taxation.

To avoid excessive burden to the impoverished peasant the compensation is to be in the shape of bonds representing the average value of the land in each particular case, only the interest on these bonds to be paid yearly from universal taxes--a topsy-turvy mortgage system, as it were, in which the state becomes the proprietor and mortgagor of the land, while its present owners are turned into forced mortgagees. Under this system the peasants will get all land available, but 90 per cent will have to pay for what is owned by a small fraction of even the remaining 10 per cent of the entire population. The proposed scheme proved to be too radical for the tsar's government in 1906 and caused the downfall of the first Duma. It provoked at the time bitter comment in Germany also, where the conservative and national-liberal press accused the Russian Const.i.tutional Democratic party of putting forward impossible demands and of attacking the very principle of property owners.h.i.+p. Yet the principle underlying the proposed reform is unquestionably capitalistic and is the chief cause of the hatred and contempt which the party enjoys on the part of Social-Democrats.

In the beginning of the sixties the conservative land committee appointed by Alexander II, composed of hereditary landowners, avowed enemies of any economic liberation of peasants, out of fear that private owners.h.i.+p of land might enrich the peasants and make them dangerous to the established order, devised a scheme of communal owners.h.i.+p of land and unconsciously taught the peasants the principles of socialism. In 1907 Const.i.tutional Democrats opposed the bill of the Government for the dissolution of land communities and subst.i.tution of private for communal land owners.h.i.+p at the request of individual peasants. The objection raised was on the ground that peasants suddenly possessed of a chance to get ready money would sell their land to a few exploiters and being unable to put it to good use would rapidly become paupers. The best men in the Duma opposed Stolypin's bill, and the law was introduced by stealth and promulgated during a forced recess of the Duma. Contrary to expectation the law neither led to the results desired by the Government, nor to those feared by Const.i.tutional Democrats. It remained a dead letter. Few members of peasant communities applied for separation. The Government tried to boost its scheme by building at its own expense model, fake peasant homes. The peasants had already their own idea as to remedies in regard to land shortage and did not want any subst.i.tute.

The difficulty of making the peasant respect the principle of private owners.h.i.+p of land is due to many causes. The most liberal minded landowners were usually those who spent their winters in various occupations in large cities and used their estates as summer homes and a partial source of income. The work of supervision was only too often intrusted to utterly unscrupulous and uneducated managers belonging to the peasant cla.s.s, while the neighboring peasants were employed as day laborers in the field and garden. This kind of labor was already available, because peasants were unable to derive sufficient income from their own land to pay the heavy taxes and to support their families.

Scarcely any landowners understood anything of agriculture and few paid any attention to it. I know splendid estates which brought in miserable incomes, not normal even under the antiquated system of four year crop rotation and quite absurd if measured by standards of modern American farming, yet sufficient to place at the disposal of the owners a splendid mansion in Moscow or Petrograd and a no less splendid summer home on their estate. There, during the hot summer days, the owners were enjoying their comfort in idleness and talking of reforms necessary for the benefit of the peasants, while peasant women were cutting the wheat for them with sickles, stooping and sweating under the scorching rays of the sun. The superintendents of those estates enriched themselves at the expense of the blind or careless and carefree owners under the very eyes of the peasants who hated the superintendents, pitied or despised the liberal owners, as the case might be, and gloomily compared their own poverty and labor with the ease and wealth of their employers.

The more thrifty and less liberal owners, who remained the greater part of the year on their estates, were perhaps more respected but still less liked. Any attempt at careful management of the estate was invariably considered to be a sign of stinginess or of hardheartedness. The idea of property is not clearly defined in the mind of the average peasant who considers plants that are not planted but grow wild to be a gift of G.o.d.

In disputes involving such cases the line between rightful possession and theft is difficult to draw, and men who took the controversy to court were invariably hated. A glaring example of this kind was an otherwise liberal minded landowner, a well known professor of sociology, who spent three-quarters of a year in lecturing at a foreign university of which he was a member and who was finally murdered on his own estate.

The home life of even liberal intellectuals was another barrier between them and the ma.s.ses. Not only was coa.r.s.e food considered to be good enough for domestics, but they seldom, if ever, had a decent corner for themselves in the house and their miserable wages were out of all proportion with the long hours of service required. Many families had guests almost daily, the company sitting around a samovar, discussing and conversing until one or two in the morning, while the sleepy domestics were stealing a nap in the anteroom, ready to appear at the call of the mistress. The table had to be cleared after the guests and the family retired for the night and the breakfast had to be prepared, boots polished, stoves heated, rooms cleaned in the early morning. For the master might rest until ten or eleven, but the children have to be at school by eight and the servants must be ready to serve them. And though many families kept professional servants, the country homes depended almost entirely in winter as well as in summer on local help.

Attempts to improve the condition of peasants were numerous and in some respects successful, but found an obstacle on the one hand in the att.i.tude of the Government and on the other in the conservatism and suspicion of the peasants themselves. Fire insurance and cooperative enterprises helped to a certain degree, but an almost complete absence of expert agriculturists in the ranks of the landowners prevented them from demonstrating on their own estates the value of applied knowledge as well as from teaching the peasants how to increase the productivity of the land through intensive farming. Thus it came to pa.s.s that the vast majority of landowners, both conservative and liberal, remained strangers to the people among whom they lived, whose labor they employed, and for whose welfare many were in earnest concerned. The Const.i.tutional Democratic party is strong in the cities. In the country it has no followers and in the sweeping incendiary fires of 1905-06 estates were burned which belonged in several cases to men who spent their life in fighting for freedom against the tsar's government.

No less unfortunate is the party in its relation to the cla.s.s of factory workers. That part of its program which relates to the labor question embraces a number of important reforms meeting almost all demands of the working cla.s.s. The barrier between them is the capitalistic principle.

A perusal of the lists of Const.i.tutional Democrats who have subscribed large sums for the Russian liberty loan will show why workmen speak of them as capitalists even though the party has accepted the principle of progressive income taxation. There is a feeling of intense hatred toward all Const.i.tutional Democrats on the part of all workmen.

Nothing is more instructive than the rapid change in the position which the Const.i.tutional Democratic party occupied in the eyes of the people after the revolution. Before the outbreak of hostilities all parties were against war. But soon, under the influence of the German methods of warfare in Belgium, France, and Russia, the feeling changed. Even the Mensheviki among the Social-Democrats declared themselves in favor of war and the only party remaining firm in condemning all war was that of the Bolsheviki. The entrance of the Turks into the war was almost considered a G.o.dsend by the Const.i.tutional Democrats, Octoberists, and Conservatives in the Duma because it cleared the way for a final settlement of the Balkan problem and promised the elimination of Turkey from Europe. Long after Sazonov was removed, when the consent of England and France to give Russia free hand in Constantinople and the Straits was read in a telegram before the Duma, a general outburst of enthusiasm took place, the members demanding to know why Sazonov, who was justly credited with this achievement, was in retirement and not in charge of the foreign office which he should have held by right. Miliukov's speeches and writings on the future settlement of the Balkan problem were jokingly spoken of as his dissertation for the degree of foreign secretary. At home the party was pursuing a policy of patient endurance, postponing strife for the future until the crimes of the tsar's government made further silence impossible. At that time the whole tissue of treason was not yet known, but enough was in evidence to demand vigorous protest. Not being a revolutionary party the Const.i.tutional Democrats abstained from any action not strictly within the law and merely condemned the activity of the Government. They desired amelioration of the fundamental laws, but even that they would have preferred to accomplish by persuasion rather than by force. In fact they considered socialist demands unreasonable, socialization of Russia premature, and any violent overthrow unwise and hazardous. For the latter opinion they found support in the failure of the uprising of the working cla.s.s in 1905-06, when the punitive expeditions proved the loyalty of the army to the throne. Consequently the att.i.tude of the army in the memorable days of the March revolution was a great surprise to them. At the same time they attributed to themselves the lion share in the overthrow, presumably on the ground that ma.s.ses follow leaders and the Const.i.tutional Democrats were the only ones who had a chance for open protest in the Duma and made use of it. This delusion led to a series of tactical errors and cost them dearly. In all elections they polled a comparatively small vote. Trying to save Russia for the Allies they failed to meet the Russian Socialists on their own ground and were forced to explain away differences of opinion much too thoroughgoing to be explained away. In a country which is in the throes of the most remarkable revolution ever witnessed, they tried to apply non-revolutionary methods and drew on themselves the suspicion of the ma.s.ses of being counter-revolutionists. From the very moment when Miliukov announced the pa.s.sing of the supreme power from the Tsar to Grand Duke Michail, when his words were answered by angry shouts in favor of a democratic republic, the position of the party became precarious. They had either to revise their own program and to catch up with the rush of the progressive current, or else to find themselves in the role of inundated rocks over which the waters flow. The announcement that the party would support a demand for a republic was too late to change the first impression, while the proposition to accept unconditional expropriation of land in place of the compensation plan was defeated in heated debate at the party convention. Under normal circ.u.mstances the party would have probably been steadily losing support, but the arrest and imprisonment of the best and highly honored leaders by the Bolsheviki is bound to put fresh vigor into their efforts and give new life to their cause.

The leaders of the Bolsheviki themselves have fallen into error of a different kind. Being primarily a party of the wage earning day laborers, the program of the Bolsheviki puts the interest of the proletariat above everything else. From insufficient observation of peasant life and the fact that peasants want socialization of land, they jump to the conclusion that the country is ready for complete socialization. Only the more educated leaders among them realize that such a conclusion is premature. But to bring about the necessary change in as near a future as possible, the leaders of the Bolsheviki have fanned hatred of the proletariat toward the "bourgeois" cla.s.ses. One must give them credit in this respect. They know the value of simple language when they put this hatred into words. Listen to the Russian Ma.r.s.eillaise: "Rise, brothers, all at once against the thieves, the curs--the rich ones! Against the vampire Tsar! Beat them, kill them--the cursed evil-doers! Glow, dawn of better life!" The simple ideology, the easy catch phrases in which the language of this ideology is couched, the primeval character of the pa.s.sion aroused, contribute to the success which the party enjoys among working people and homeless paupers.

Therein lies the power of the Bolsheviki. But reaction is bound to come and here again the peasants will play the chief role. All accounts of conversations with peasants tend to show that they have very vague ideas of socialism. In fact the Social-Democrats have not taken the trouble to acquaint the peasants with the principles of their teaching, leaving that field almost entirely to the influence of socialist-revolutionists.

Among the intellectuals none have come nearer to the understanding of peasant psychology than those men and women who from the first espoused the cause of the peasant. Realizing the s.p.a.ce separating educated men from their less fortunate brothers, they gave up their life as intellectuals and "went among the people." They donned peasant garb and acquired peasant tongue. From this group of workers for freedom later the Socialist-revolutionary party developed. "All land for the peasant"

is their slogan, while their promise to expropriate all land without any compensation naturally meets with approval on the part of the land-hungry peasants. Moreover, their program does not demand immediate complete socialization of Russia, leaving that to a gradual process of evolution and change of existing conditions. In the ten years preceding the first revolution thousands of young intellectuals joined the party and fought the tsar's regime. They showed a degree of self-abnegation found only in people whose heart is kindled with the true spirit of devotion to a great cause. The revolution of 1905 would never have taken place but for their organized "terror from below." The high regard held for them by the widest circles has caused their rise in power during the first two months of the revolution of 1917. But tactical errors committed by the leaders of the party as well as dissensions within the party itself contributed to a rather rapid change of sentiment toward them on all sides. In a measure as the Const.i.tutional Democrats vigorously objected to their policy to put into life as soon as possible the agrarian reforms promised by them, the Social-Democrats on their part attacked them for their moderation in other demands. For some reason not yet clear, Kerensky was slighted in the very beginning of his political career when his nomination to the executive council of the Socialist-revolutionist party was opposed by a large majority. Just as the Const.i.tutional Democrats made a series of tactical errors due to the fact that they thought themselves representative of the spirit of the Russian people, whereas in reality they stood sponsors only for a relatively small minority, even so the Socialist-revolutionists misjudged the att.i.tude of other parties toward themselves. They overrated the ability of the ma.s.ses to distinguish between their att.i.tude toward war in general and the necessity to continue the present war. They overrated the ability of the soldiers to distinguish between slavish obedience and military discipline. They tried to play the role of a center. They tried to mediate between Social-Democrats and Const.i.tutional Democrats and naturally failed in this attempt. Some of their leaders, notably Mr. Tschernov, were accused by Const.i.tutional Democrats of being pro-German if not actual German agents. Others, including Kerensky himself and even Mme. Breshkovsky, were accused by the Bolsheviki of having been almost bribed by the capitalistic interests of America, England, and France. Needless to say that the accusations had no basis whatever in actual facts and represent simply an ugly outgrowth of misguided jealousy of the ma.s.ses to guard their dearly won right to a social revolution against those whom they consider the worst enemies of socialism, and the desire of unscrupulous leaders to profit by it. Thus the Socialist-revolutionists were gradually relegated in the mind of the extremists to the great body of the hated "bourgeois." Only in their rightful element, among the peasants, they continue to enjoy a great deal of popularity, and the returns to the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly show that theirs will be the absolute majority even though they lost some of their popularity.

The progress of the Russian Revolution presents a sad spectacle of an almost complete failure on the part of the majority of intellectuals to understand the spirit of the times and to guide the ma.s.ses through the labyrinth of errors. In days past the Russian intellectuals were the forefighters for freedom and the Russian people will ever be indebted to them for this. They prepared the soil for the revolution by spreading ideas of freedom by all means at their disposal. They weakened the tsar's power and thus contributed to its overthrow by persistent attacks upon the system of autocratic government. They helped to awaken the spirit of self-consciousness in the ma.s.ses. But they did not evolve new principles. They did not open wide avenues for the development of a new order of social organization. They misunderstood the ma.s.ses and consequently were unable to control the forces set loose. And if Russia is going to be saved from utter ruin amidst the clamor and strife of party leaders and to evolve a new democratic system, it will be due not to the intellectuals, but to the great spirit of the dark ma.s.ses of the Russian peasants.

FORCES BEHIND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION FORCES BEHIND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

By Samuel N. Harper

One was struck by the remarkable unity that characterized the short first period of the Russian Revolution of last March. One knew, however, that there were two distinct sets of forces behind the movement, operating through two kinds of organizations. There were first the already existing and parliamentary inst.i.tutions which had become revolutionary in spirit and methods of action. On the other hand there were the inst.i.tutions produced by the revolution itself, emerging from the chaos in the midst of which the other, already functioning bodies, were trying to take a new and directing line. The most prominent of the first type of inst.i.tution was the Duma, the legislative parliament of the old regime, and of the second type, the Petrograd Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies.

The Duma, however, was only one of several legal inst.i.tutions that had developed under the old regime, and represented the first stages of parliamentary, popular government. There were the local provincial and munic.i.p.al councils, and also the officially recognized war-industry committees, which had come to have semi-governmental functions.

Finally one could bring under this category, with a little forcing, the cooperative societies, which had a.s.sumed enormous importance during the two and a half years of war.

In these inst.i.tutions we had self-government, and partic.i.p.ation in public affairs, and also the idea of cooperation between the various cla.s.ses and political tendencies--the idea of coalition. The election law of the Duma provided for the representation of all group interests of the community, and representation by an actual member of the group, by a _bona fide_ peasant in the case of the peasantry. The seats in the a.s.sembly were distributed specifically to landlords, manufacturers, the smaller bourgeoisie, workmen, and peasants. The election law of the local government bodies made similar provision for group representation.

On the war-industry committees, the workmen had elected representatives, sitting with the representatives of the manufacturers and owners. In the cooperative movement the bourgeois-intellectual element had taken the initiative, but had always emphasized the direct partic.i.p.ation of the workmen and peasants in the actual management of the societies, as the theory of the movement demanded.

Thus the broader democratic cla.s.ses of the country, the workmen and peasants, were represented in the somewhat popular inst.i.tutions that had developed under the old regime. But the actual control was in the hands of the less democratic elements--the landlords, the manufacturers, men of the liberal professions, and of the so-called Intelligentsia cla.s.s.

Most of these men were of liberal and democratic tendencies, but they were in actual fact, as compared with the broader ma.s.ses, of the privileged cla.s.ses. They had emphasized always the essentially democratic character of the activity of the inst.i.tutions in which they were the leaders. They put particular stress on the fact that the activities of the local provincial councils, for example, were directed mainly toward the amelioration of conditions of life among the peasantry. But the fact that the control over these inst.i.tutions, even in the cooperative movement (so far as independent control was allowed by the bureaucracy of the old regime), was secured to the less democratic elements of the community, did contradict the idea of coalition, of the bringing together of all interests and forces. These inst.i.tutions had been permitted to exist and develop only because they were controlled by the more conservative groups. The cooperative societies represented more truly the idea of coalition. Here in the cooperative movement the leaders of political liberalism had always noted with relief that one was gradually attaining the end toward which they knew they must work--the organic union between the so-called Intelligentsia, and the "people," meaning the broader, democratic cla.s.ses.

When the anarchy resulting from the incompetence, stupidity and perhaps treason of the old bureaucracy reached such an acute stage in the first weeks of March that the leaders of the Russian public saw that some action must be taken by some one, it was the Duma that a.s.sumed the initiative, acting in a revolutionary manner, through an executive committee. The munic.i.p.al and provincial councils, organized in unions for war-work, and the war-industry committees, turned without delay to the revolutionary parliament, in which many of their leading workers were members. The leaders of the cooperative movement could not act with such rapidity and precision. They had not been permitted to organize a central committee, to coordinate the work of the thousands of small and scattered societies. These first leaders of the revolution felt justified in taking the initiative because they alone were organized.

Also they thought they could speak in the name of all cla.s.ses, including the most democratic, because the inst.i.tutions through which they acted did include representatives of all cla.s.ses. To emphasize its special anxiety that the more democratic groups feel their direct partic.i.p.ation in the movement of which it had taken the leaders.h.i.+p, the Executive Committee of the Duma not only accepted but encouraged the development of the revolutionary inst.i.tutions of the second category, of which the first to emerge was the Petrograd Council of Workmen's and Soldiers'

Deputies.

This Council was organized during the very first days of the revolution; it was in fact the resurrection of a revolutionary body of the 1905 revolution. The Duma invited the Council to share its own convenient quarters. Perhaps the invitation was an afterthought, for the workmen and soldiers of Petrograd in revolt had gravitated toward the Duma, had calmly entered and taken possession of the large corridors of the palace. The Council was a strictly revolutionary, and a very democratic body, composed of directly elected delegates from the factories and garrison regiments of Petrograd. It immediately became the organizing center for what came to be called the "revolutionary democracy," as opposed to the "bourgeoisie."

The Executive Committee of the Duma consulted with the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies on the composition of the proposed Provisional Government, and on the political program to be announced.

For as we saw, it was the first thought of these leaders to secure unity of action. They recognized that the Council did in fact represent "revolutionary democracy," at least of Petrograd. As the workmen and soldiers of Petrograd were completely out of hand, armed and fighting on the streets, arresting officers, ministers and police, and showing a tendency to start general and anarchic pillaging, the Duma leaders saw a restraining authority in the Council of these same workmen and soldiers.

They therefore either did not wish, or did not dare, to object at the time to the famous order No. 1 to the garrison of Petrograd, issued by the Council, and not by the Executive Committee of the Duma. Many have claimed that this particular order, which was extended to the front, was responsible for the later demoralization of the whole Russian army.

Others, the leaders of revolutionary democracy, have insisted that this order prevented the immediate and complete collapse of the whole army.

In preparing the slate for the new government, the Executive Committee of the Duma selected one of the presiding officers of the Council, Kerensky. When Miliukov, the Duma leader, announced the composition of the new provisional government to the crowd, composed largely of workmen and soldiers gathered in the main corridors of the Duma, he emphasized the cooperation between Duma and Council, the consent of Kerensky to enter the government, and also the fact that most of the members of the new government had worked in and through inst.i.tutions, in which peasants and workmen also had been represented.

Though the word "coalition" was not used during the first weeks of the revolution, one had constantly in mind the idea of "bringing together all the vital forces of the country." In this last expression I quote one of the first and most emphasized slogans of the revolution. But the problem proved most difficult, complicated by the fact that one had to solve at one and the same time two most stupendous tasks. One had to consolidate the conquests of the revolution, and also prosecute the war. The prosecution of the war required the acceptance of a strong authority, vested in the Provisional Government. But naturally the first aim of the revolution was to extend its ideas to the rest of the country, for the actual overthrow of the old order had been largely the work of Petrograd. The two tasks were closely a.s.sociated with one another, because one could not reorganize the country for the war until the new ideas had taken root.