Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution/Chapter 1
THREE ASPECTS OF THE
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
CHAPTER I
THE REVOLUTION AT PETROGRAD
WE set sail on the 7th of May 1917 from a Scottish port, bound for Russia viâ Bergen and Stockholm, and immediately we seemed to come into touch with the Russian Revolution.
There were on board representatives from all the great allied nations: six Japanese officers, a British military mission, French merchants, and a number of Russians returning from exile. The latter filled the cabins, crowded the smoking-room and the dining-room, overflowing even on to the deck, where many of them throughout that cold and rainy night of the North passed the long hours, their lifebelts round their bodies, smoking innumerable cigarettes, and discussing peace and war, Lénin and Kerensky.
The friends that we found among them introduced us to two soldiers who were coming from the Champagne front, sent as delegates by their fellow-soldiers to the Soviet at Petrograd.
One of them was a Socialist, secretary to a Trade Union in pre-war days; the other, a book-keeper of peasant origin, had revolutionary tendencies, without being attached to any particular party.
They told us of their different experiences.
When the news of the Russian Revolution reached the western front, many soldiers in the Russian brigades mutinied and tried to assault their officers, but our two delegates interposed and succeeded in directing the movement on the right lines. Four delegates per company were elected, and together they chose a deputation to wait upon the Military Authorities. When the members of this deputation presented themselves at General Headquarters, they were threatened with arrest. "You would not find any one to arrest us," was their answer. They were told that if they did not obey instantly a French Army Division was ready to march against them. "The French are too intelligent to do any such thing," they replied. And no doubt there was little probability of the experiment being made, for ultimately the organization of the soldiers was tacitly recognized. When the two delegates asked permission to go to Petrograd, the officer in command to whom they applied contented himself with replying: "Can you promise me that if I let you go I shall not be killed by my men in your absence?"
Judging by the information given us by these delegates—and we have every reason to believe that in the case of one of the two brigades at least what they said was true—discipline did not suffer greatly, and after this incident the moral of the troops was even better than before. When the Russian Revolution was announced on the Champagne front, the Russian soldiers said: "Now we are really going to fight the Germans." Or else: "Now if we are killed we can be assured that our wives and children will not be destitute."
"After that," added the delegates, "is it not wrong to think in France that the Russians are planning a separate peace, which would dishonour the Revolution and deliver them up to the Central Empires?"
That was the keynote of much that we heard constantly expressed later on, even among the Zimmerwaldians, or the Extremists, or, at least, among such extremists as were not secret agents of Germany.
Certainly, among the travelling companions whom we met several days afterwards in the train between Stockholm and Petrograd, there were many revolutionaries who longed ardently for a separate peace "in order to be able," as Clémenceau says, "to give themselves up entirely to the joys of civil war." But however keen their pacifism, however impatient they were to conclude at any price a general peace, they were forced to admit that if the Russian Revolution concluded a separate peace, the Russian Revolution was lost.
Except on this point, however, it would have been difficult to find anything in common between these exiles who were returning to their country after years of absence, some from Switzerland viâ Germany, others from France, Great Britain, and the United States: some of the latter—not all—were full of bitter resentment against the police surveillance of which they had been victims; whilst many of the former were strongly imbued with lessons learned in the school of German Socialism.
During the three days that the journey from Stockholm to Petrograd lasted—with a break of twelve hours to allow of the passage of the ice on the Tornea, in the middle of May—we had occasion to exchange views with one of the Maximalists, who was soon after to become, along with Lénin, the leading spirit of the risings of Cronstadt and Petrograd: citizen Trotsky, to whom the Provisional Government had generously granted passports to enable him to come and combat it.
He was coming from Canada, with a group of supporters, full of rancour and rage against the British who had interned him at Halifax during several days; against such Socialists as ourselves, who believed in the necessity of carrying on the war; against Kerensky, against the Minimalists, against all those whom he accused of compromise with the bourgeoisie and of concessions to militarism and imperialism.
Scarcely had we crossed the Finnish frontier than we witnessed the beginning of his propaganda.
In the stations, full of soldiers in heavy khaki coats and their winter sheepskin caps, he improvised meetings; he spoke of Stockholm; he lauded the Revolution, proclaimed the duty of the International proletariat to put an end to the horrors of war at the earliest opportunity.
But this propaganda, which was stopped only by the signal for the train to start, was counteracted by another propaganda, not less active and not less prolix.
There were in the train more than three hundred Russian military doctors who had just been liberated after having been prisoners in Germany since the beginning of the war.
To the soldiers whom Trotsky was haranguing they told of the sufferings of their fellow-countrymen, the martyrdom of two million men, a prey to famine and typhus, abandoned without medical aid, flogged, exposed to the heat of the sun for the smallest peccadillo; they had already seen three hundred thousand of their comrades die since the beginning of the war, and to support what they were saying they showed photographs, they read documents, and called upon their comrades in captivity to bear witness to the truth of all they said.
They were listened to and applauded, as the others had been listened to and applauded. But in these crowds, which seemed all eyes and ears, every one remained perfectly calm.
Even among the opponents—for often the two parties attacked each other—there was never a coarse word, not an evil-sounding expression, and we witnessed this tolerance, a little apathetic perhaps, with regard to all theories, this sociability and aptitude for living in a state of anarchy, that was one of the things that amazed us most during our sojourn in Russia.
Our train was due to arrive at Petrograd on the third day in the evening. But we had to take into account the disorder of the transport service, and it was not till six o'clock in the morning that we steamed into the Finland station. Some Belgians, who had spent the night in the station, were waiting for us, carrying our national flag, whilst amidst a flourish of red flags, with pacifist inscriptions in white lettering on gold, some hundreds of Maximalists escorted Trotsky.
Immediately after we were taken to the Hôtel de l'Europe, where we were to be the guests of the Provisional Government.
Renan, in speaking of the French Revolution, said: "It would be absurd to try to impose our petty programmes of common-sense citizens on this extraordinary movement, so completely beyond our comprehension." And those who attempt already to pronounce judgment on the Russian Revolution would do well to reflect on this saying. Never was a revolution more radical and so rapid. From the time of the taking of La Bastille to the downfall of Louis XVI three years elapsed; between the abdication of the Czar to the creation of the Russian Republic there were but three days. And during these three days not only Czarism, but the Douma, and the Zemtvos, and all the institutions more or less Liberal, which were the results of the movement of 1905, collapsed.
Our first visit on arriving at Petrograd was to the Tauride Palace, where the Soviet was sitting.
I had been there in June 1914, some weeks before the war. Maxim Kovalewsky, who died six months afterwards as a result of his captivity in Austria, had introduced me to President Rodzianko. I had signed the "Livre d'Or" immediately after the Dowager Empress, who had visited the Tauride Palace for the first time some days before. I had been photographed in the gardens—with Tscheidze, who is to-day President of the Soviet, with Skobeleff, now Minister of Labour, and with the four Socialist members of the Douma, who, to welcome me, had interrupted their discussions.
Even then, any one who visited Russia with his eyes open was bound to realize that the opposition to the existing régime included all classes and parties, and that Czarism had no other support than its beneficiaries and its parasites. But who would have thought in that beautiful month of June, when all Europe seemed to be entering upon its summer vacation, that a world-war was imminent, and that three years later the Czar would be a prisoner and the red flag be flying over the Winter Palace and Peter and Paul, and that the Douma itself would be overthrown by the triumphant Revolution?
In its place, since those May days, have been installed the members of the Workmen and Soldiers' Committee.
The great hall is empty, or it is only filled on special days, when the 2,500 delegates of the Soviet assemble to hold a general meeting. In the corridors, in the committee rooms, soldiers are sleeping, drinking tea, and supping a kind of porridge. It smacks of the guard-house and of the public kitchen. Albert Thomas, who is with us, says: "I begin to understand the Commune better." Sentries are everywhere with fixed bayonets and a red rosette in their buttonholes. The Revolution is well guarded. But our papers are in order, and we are taken in at once to the Executive Committee.
Tscheidze is presiding, with Skobeleff beside him. We recognize some other friends whom we have met before in this same Tauride Palace or at the International Congresses. But how many new figures there are! Siberia has given up her exiles. The Revolutionary emigration has come back to its own. Amongst the members of the Executive Committee, moreover, all are not Russians. Without mentioning the Jews, who are very numerous, Mme. Kolontay, sitting among the Leninists, is Finnish. And there is Rakowski, too, the Socialist leader of Roumania: one never knows exactly whether he is Roumanian or Bulgarian. He had been sent to prison by the Government at Jassy, and set free by Russian soldiers! From this cosmopolitan assembly we receive a cordial but reserved welcome. They applaud, however, when Albert Thomas announces that in France the Socialists are inaugurating a campaign for a policy inspired by the principles of the new Russia.
We, in our turn, offer them the congratulations of the Belgian workmen on the Revolution. We begin to notice at the same time what we have in common and what divides us. Stockholm is discussed, and we formulate our objections and reluctance; we point out the danger and the uselessness of a meeting with the German Socialists. But definite positions seem to have been taken on either side. We exchange notes, however, and fix further meetings.
Meantime, we intend to get into touch not with the leaders this time, but with the masses.
At the Tschinizelli Circus the sailors from the Black Sea, who from the first day have been the fervent apostles of an armed Revolution, had organized a political mass meeting. There were present, besides the Belgian delegates, who received a formidable ovation, the Ambassador of the United States, the heads of the military missions of France and Great Britain, the Ministers of Roumania and Servia. The last named was concluding his speech, when there was a movement among these thousands of men, and attention was suddenly fixed on a figure that was entering. The audience rose as a man, and applause rang out as before the formerly imperial tribune a man appeared, dressed in the khaki uniform of a simple soldier: it was Kerensky.
The man who three months hence was to say to the Congress of Moscow, "You owe obedience to a supreme power and to me, who am at its head," is a young man about thirty-four years of age, of a pale, delicate appearance. He is said to be seriously ill, and in forcing himself to perform so great a task to be giving his life to the Revolution. That is perhaps one of the secrets of the influence which he wields over the Revolution. He could not be called eloquent; he has not the fire of a Jaurès nor the power of subtle argument of a Victor Adler. His voice is rough, and hi delivery is without art. But he has in this delivery that mysterious magnetism which draws crowds and inspires martyrs.
We met Kerensky again soon afterwards in the Ministry of War, where he had just been installed. A Grand Duke was waiting in the antechamber. The staff of the former régime was employed still there to show in the visitors. But where Soukhomlinoff, now in Peter and Paul, had lived, we found to-day with the new Minister, Madame Breschkowska, the grandmother of the Revolution, this wonderful old woman, who at eighty years of age, twenty years of which were spent in Siberia, had still the physical strength and moral courage to traverse this immense Russia, preaching the Revolution and inspiring others with the burning fire of her own passion.
When she heard that we were Belgians, and that we came as representatives of Belgian labour, she came towards us and embraced us in a maternal fashion.
We went away, moved and comforted by this interview. The ice was broken. We were really in touch with each other. We had felt the heart of the Russian Revolution beating in unison with our own, and during the three weeks that we spent in Petrograd this impression was deepened daily.
One must have lived through these early days of the uprising to understand the enthusiasm of the first weeks of a great Revolution.
Every Sunday, from morning until night, processions passed constantly, bearing flowers and wreaths of everlastings to the Champs de Mars, where the dead of the Revolution have been buried. On the Newsky Perspective or on the Novoïe Vremia, or even at the Crédit Lyonnais or the Bank of Siberia, the red flag was flying, and holiday crowds were gathering for the sole pleasure of fraternizing, purchasing books that even yesterday were forbidden them, and breathing the air of liberty. In the Conservatoire, in the House of the People, in the Imperial Theatres, concerts and lectures were always going on. The music was generally excellent, and thousands of auditors applauded, until late in the night, the leading orators of the Revolution.
It would have been difficult often to tell with whom the political sympathies of the assembly lay. Maximalists and Minimalists, Bolcheviks and Mencheviks, Léninists and Kerensky's supporters or partisans of Plekanoff, succeeded one another on the platform without their contradictory statements producing the slightest tumult, the least disorder.
Anywhere else, we venture to say in—London, Paris, or Brussels—such meetings would have been absolutely impossible, and would have ended either in the audience coming to blows or with their clamour drowning the voice of the speakers.
Here there was nothing of the sort. There was complete anarchy and absence of all authority, but liberty of speech was absolute. The Revolution policed itself with admirable impartiality.
Probably it will be pointed out that a few weeks afterwards these same crowds came into the streets, and that the anarchists of Petrograd went hand in hand with the insurgents of Cronstadt, that under pretext of expropriations evildoers pillaged the shops, sacked the banks, and installed themselves in the villas and palaces that had been abandoned by the proprietors. But who can judge of the enormous exaggerations published on this subject in sensational newspapers in Paris or London? And who can number the fantastic false reports that were being circulated even in Petrograd, when public opinion was strung up to concert-pitch and La Pravda (Truth), a Lénin newspaper, announced a manifestation?
One fine Sunday, for instance, they told us that the Republic of Cronstadt had opened hostilities, that a Bolchevik warship was in the maritime canal about seven versts from the capital, and that shells of large calibre were already bursting in the suburbs. "I have seen them explode," a fellow-countryman told us. "They are firing on a munition depot." Information from a sounder source revealed the fact that there was no warship in the canal; that all was quiet at Cronstadt, but that a purely accidental fire had broken out in a hayloft.
Some days afterwards there was a fresh alarm.
The Léninists had decided that their revolution, or at least an armed manifestation, should take place the next day at one o'clock. The procession was to start from the Finland station. Anarchists installed in the Villa Dournovo had promised their support. There were more than ten thousand of them, and they had twelve heavy guns!
At the appointed hour we went to see what was taking place. Everything was calm in the Finland suburb. Peaceful citizens were walking about, reading the manifesto of the Provisional Government inviting all loyal citizens to remain at home. We then went to the Villa Dournovo, the headquarters of the anarchists. There were no guns. There were not ten thousand men, there were only about thirty-five people at the most, and the wild anarchists invited us most cordially to come in and have a cup of tea.
In short, during the three months that followed the Revolution, and during which there was not one policeman, not one gendarme, not even a Cossack, at Petrograd, nothing but a volunteer militia, without weapons or authority, we do not think it is an exaggeration to say that in that city of over two million men, where crowds were standing in long queues waiting to obtain a morsel of black bread, there was not more crime, more wrongdoing, more disorder than in the well-guarded capitals of Western Europe.
To whom or to what is the credit due for this calm, for this relative tranquillity, this almost peaceful development of the most subversive revolution that the world has ever known?
Surely, in the first instance, to the character of the Russian people. In Russia the man of the people, when he is sober, is infinitely more peaceful, more docile, more sociable in a word, than the workman or peasant of our own countries.
But he must be sober.
In 1905, when vodka was to be had at every street-corner, when the rebels began by pillaging the alcohol stores in many towns, frightful scenes of bestiality took place, such as, for instance, the butcheries of Kischineff and the massacres of Odessa and the industrial centres of the Caspian Sea. If it has been otherwise this time, it is because the Revolution of 1917 has been a dry Revolution.
Assuredly, while prohibition is general, it is not absolute. Though one cannot buy alcohol, it is not forbidden to have it in one's possession, and when one is willing to pay the price, in certain restaurants, contraband champagne may be purchased at sixty roubles per bottle.
A moujik, who has procured some raw spirit somewhere, may be seen occasionally in the streets abominably drunk. But that is the inevitable leakage of a system that is otherwise most strictly observed. Indeed, it is literally a fact that it is almost impossible to obtain in the cafes or restaurants not only whisky, but wine or beer. Only water is to be seen on the tables, or kwass—white, red, or black kwass—which is made by fermenting bread, and in which the degree of alcohol does not exceed 1 per cent., or at most 2 per cent. Total abstinence, consequently, is almost obligatory, and perhaps the leaders of the old regime, who have at least the merit of this radical reform, owe their lives to that fact.
We have so far noted some of the most obvious aspects, but also the most superficial, of the Revolution at Petrograd. It may be said that these impressions have nothing sensational in them.
Among the publicists of every nationality who were in Russia when we were there, many indeed did not seek to hide their disappointment; they had hoped to find in the Revolution a unique opportunity for obtaining good copy, and instead they were asking themselves every evening how to put together a hundred lines to send to their paper.
In short, the streets, apart from the red flags, the excessive dirt, and the trams laden with soldiers, had their usual aspect. Ministerial crises were neither more nor less frequent than in Paris. The very number of public meetings made them insipid in the end. On the surface Russian life seemed much the same as it had been before the Revolution: the staffs in the ministries were still at their posts, and in this country, free henceforward in a sense that no other country in the world has ever been, we were reminded by the doorkeepers when we visited the Hermitage Museum that we must remove our hats.
To understand really the immense and chaotic transformation that was taking place in the minds of the people and in the very conditions of life, it was not enough to look at the scenes in the streets; one had to talk with the people, to come into contact with the different groups, to go elsewhere than Petrograd, to visit the Russian armies and the factories.
We had only two months to do all that in. We made the attempt, however, by dividing up our party. Accompanied by Lieutenant de Man, I started for Moscow, where we arrived in the midst of the general strike of the dvorniks (janitors) and of the hotel staffs. M. de Brouckère devoted himself especially to visiting the factories. Together, on the invitation of General Alexeieff, we spent a fortnight with the armies of the South and the South-West, while during the whole of our sojourn we never ceased to carry on an active propaganda for Belgium and to hold meetings with the Soviet.
In the following chapters will be found some of the observations that we made from this triple point of view: industrial, military, and political.