The World Significance of the Russian Revolution/Section 7
VII. Lack of Principles and Policy the Cause of Defeat.
The White Armies were defeated, because they were inefficient, they were inefficient because political traitors were allowed to conspire to ensure their inefficiency. The administration of the occupied White territories also ensured the collapse of the movement for the same reasons. The Whites could unite on no policy because they had no common policy, because all their efforts were nullified by intrigue, conspiracy and "sabotage," and finally because no movement representing a heterogeneous jumble of contradictory and incompatible elements can ever defeat another movement which at any rate knows its own mind and allows of no compromise.
A definite positive movement alone can defeat another definite movement. Even the Russian peasants understand this better than the Allied statesmen and the politicians. When Denikin was making his rapid advance on Moscow the enthusiasm of the peasants of the liberated territories was unbounded. They marched out in procession to greet their deliverers, bearing at their head their Holy Eikons and the portrait of the Tzar. Imagine their perplexed chagrin when the astute political officers in Denikin's retinue told them to bury their baubles, carefully explaining that their "little quarrel with the Bolshies" had nothing to do with the Tzar, in fact they really agreed with them about the Tzar; they had not yet had time to make up their minds as to exactly what it was they did want to subtsitute for the Bolshevik Show. Anyhow they would see when they got to Moscow, and everyone must trust them because they were thoroughly "democratic." No one could dispute that, because they said so themselves. Are you surprised that the peasants went away sadly shaking their heads and saying, "We thought you had come to save us from the Bolsheviks, if you don't want Bolsheviks obviously you must have a Tzar, but now we see you are only another brand of Bolshevik after all?"
The so-called "policy" of the "Whites" and "anti-Bolsheviks" was very characteristically set forth in a series of articles by Mr. Paul Dukes in the Times, in October and November, 1919.[1]
Mr. Dukes explained very clearly and explicitly that the Whites were "anti"-Tzarist and "anti"-Bolshevist. The Russian people he thought "may not have learned what they want," he, at any rate, would "attach no importance to the oft-expressed wish of the peasantry to have a Tzar back." It is not, of course, to be expected that anyone who has no more definite ideas than that he is "thoroughly democratic" would attach any importance to any positive aspirations! The peasantry, he says, have certainly learned that they do not want "Bolshevism," so this is the "positive policy" which, he claims, all Russian parties except extreme monarchists and Bolsheviks wish for instead: they are contained in the following seven "original aims" of the "Centre Party."
(1) Complete transference of the land to the peasantry. (This was one of the first cries the Bolsheviks thought of.)
(2) Separation of Church and State. (The Bolsheviks likewise did this long ago.)
(3) Acceptance of the main principles of Bolshevist development of education. (Even an "anti"-party might have thought of something more original!)
(4) Acceptance of the main principles of Bolshevist marriage law. (An equally candid confession!)
(5) Restoration to workmen of effective measure of control in factories. (Same comment as No. 1.)
(6) Reform of laws of justice on a popular basis. (Obviously much easier than to promise efficiency and equity, and it needs no definition!)
(7) Convocation at earliest moment of a national assembly. (A grand excuse for having no policy or principles of their own!)
- ↑ See especially concluding article of Nov. 12th.