the necessity of earning their bread somehow. Countess Panina, one of the most enlightened and public-spirited Russian women, had acted as Assistant Minister in Kerensky's last Ministry: she was thrown into prison for having supported this strike movement, which the Bolsheviks treated as a " sabotage " of Government services. She was eventually released, but two among the most idealistic, most self-sacrificing of the Liberals who had taken part in the Provisional Government, Shingarev and Kokoshkin, fell victims to a dastardly gang of murderers in a hospital where they had been lodged on account of illness.
The only serious attempt to oppose armed resistance to the bandits was offered by Gen. Alexeiev and the indefatigable Kornilov. They collected a few thousands of devoted men, most of them officers, formed them into improvised units, and took the field against the Bolsheviks in a far-off corner of the empire in Northern Caucasus. Kornilov fell in the unequal struggle, but his comrades succeeded in building up gradually a ' Volunteer Army " which held its own in the Kuban territory. It was too weak to advance because the Cossacks, instead of joining it with all their forces, wavered and negotiated. Hetman Kaledin, a brilliant general who had won conspicuous distinction in Brusilov's campaign of 1916, was so grievously affected by this lack of patriotism that he committed suicide; and his suc- cessor, Krasnov, preferred to enter into an agreement with the Germans, who were spreading their tentacles from the Ukraine to the Donets and to the Volga.
The rise of the revolutionary tide was, however, not a con- 1 slant and unbroken process. The shattered forces of the past j did not give way without repeated attempts to reassert their vitality. The Orthodox Church that had grown up with the Russian people in its hard struggle for existence could not be reconciled with the rule of aggressive materialists. Everywhere the clergy exerted its influence publicly and secretly against the anti-Christian rulers. Tikhon, the newly appointed Patriarch of Moscow, whose chair had been set up again by a national Council of the Orthodox Church after an interval of 200 years of Babylonian bondage to lay bureaucracy, denounced and anathematized the Communists. Everywhere processions and ceremonies recalled to the popular mind the ancient traditions of creed and ritual, and even the most hardened among the rioters and deserters responded at times to these emotional appeals. The Bolsheviks turned sanctuaries into public halls, desecrated revered shrines, tortured priests and shot bishops, but these persecutions strengthened the moral hold of the Church on the flock, purified the sunken priesthood by a new baptism of blood. Among the Intellectuals themselves, religion regained many adherents, and men like Eugene Trubetskoy or Bulgakov, who had stood up for Christian ideals in the days when it was considered ridiculous for an educated man to do so, found themselves at the head of a powerful movement.
The Liberals also did not give up the struggle. A number of more or less secret associations sprang up. The Press was being gradually gagged by the Bolsheviks, but these associations continued their underground existence in spite of the espionage and arrests. The most influential were the Radical League of Reconstruction (Soyuz Vozrojdenia) led by Avksentiev and Argunov, the " Centre," composed of Cadets and Left Octo- brists with N. Astrov and N. Shtchpkin at their head, and a un- ion of the Rights whose principal leaders were Krivoshein and Gourko. The question of yielding to the Germans and crushing the Communists with their help was eagerly discussed in con- nexion with the plan of a monarchical restoration. The idea found favour among the Rights and was supported among the Cadets by P. Milyukov, who had fled to Kiev, and considered that the game was definitely lost by the western Allies and that it was wiser to accept defeat from the Germans than from the Bolsheviks. This view was, however, decisively rejected by the Liberals and the Radicals, who remained staunch in their allegiance to the Entente and could not bear to think of German domination. The chastisement for this independence of mind followed closely upon the offence: the Cadets had held a confer- ence in Moscow on the political situation on May 13, 14 and 15,
and had endorsed the policy of their leaders to remain faithful to the Entente: on May 17 their various centres were raided and many representatives arrested. Others fled south and east, but Moscow was still the nucleus of a " National Centre."
Policy of the Allies. How did the Entente Powers react against the disruption of their alliance with Russia? Their ambassadors, having watched with anxiety the decay of the monarchy, offered ineffectual advice, and informed their Govern- ments of the precariousness of the situation without being able to suggest any effective course of policy. When the blow fell, the Entente Powers accepted the verdict of the Revolution as a necessary consequence of Tsarist misrule, and the President of the United States actually felt more free to join the western coalition, since the danger of a victorious advance of Tsarism had been removed. The device of a double diplomacy was adopted: while Sir George Buchanan and M. Noulens continued officially to represent Great Britain and France, special envoys were dispatched to Petrograd as emissaries of various groups of Socialists faithful to national traditions. Arthur Henderson for Great Britain and M. Albert Thomas for France were even entrusted with official missions. The main object was to steer the Russian Revolution into a warlike course, to keep up the eastern front, and to provoke a resumption of the Russian offen- sive. The results of this unusual diplomacy were very hetero- geneous. While Albert Thomas eagerly supported Kerensky in his patriotic appeals to the army, as well as in his attempts to arrange a coalition with the Soviets, Arthur Henderson became convinced of the urgent need of peace and favoured a meeting of Labour delegates in Stockholm.
The evolution of Russia was not much affected by these con- tradictory views of the Entente emissaries. The offensive was tried with disastrous results. The Russian army dissolved under the influence of the " peace at any price " movement. Disap- pointment with the conduct of revolutionary Russia was reflected in the sympathy on the part of certain circles in England for Kornilov's attempt, a sympathy which did not help but rather hampered him. The advent of the Bolsheviks drove the western Powers into an attitude of absolute helplessness. They could do nothing to counteract the Brest Litovsk negotiations, and, at the same time, they were not in a position to break off all relations with the Communist Government for fear of its taking sides with the Germans. Even the shooting of the British naval attache by Bolsheviks did not rouse them from their torpor. The Brest Litovsk peace, the occupation of southern Russia by German troops, the intervention of the Germans in Finland, obliged them, however, to adopt a decision. The embassies were gradually withdrawn, the semi-commercial and semi-dip- lomatic mission of Mr. Lockhart did not lead to any favourable results, and in the summer of 1918 all official relations with the Government of the Soviets were broken off. A state of more or less active hostility set in when the anti-Bolshevik troops were being reorganized on an extensive scale in various parts of Russia. The White forces received support from the Allies in the shape of military supph'es, occasional expeditions, and a blockade of the ports controlled by the Soviets. Concurrently with this intermittent support of Russian national armies, the Allies encouraged and protected all the nationalities of the Empire which were striving for a separation from Russia: Poland and Rumania came to be looked upon by the French as the bulwarks of Western civilization against Russian barbarism and German militarism. The Baltic States (Latvia, Esthonia, Lithuania) and the Caucasian formations (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) were backed in their separatist aspirations by Great Britain. This tendency to dismemberment of the Russian Empire could not be harmonized with the ideals and efforts of Russian patriots, but the Entente Powers did not pause to reflect on the inadvisability of destroying with one hand what they were helping to build up with the other. Psychologically, their centrifugal policy was connected with old antagonism to the Russian Empire, with dreams of national self-determination, restricted somehow by the vital interests of the " Big Four," and after the victory over the Central Powers with the
