III.
If, in an agrarian country, after seven months of the democratic republic, a peasant rebellion has broken out, this proves irrefutably that the revolution has gone bankrupt throughout the country; that the crisis through which it is passing has reached a climax, and that the time is near when the counter-revolution will make its supreme effort.
So much is clear. In the presence of a fact like the peasant rebellion, all other political symptoms, even if they contradicted the imminence of a crisis, would have value.
But, on the contrary, they all indicate, without exception, that the crisis is going to burst out.
After the agrarian question, that of most importance for Russia, particularly for the petit-bourgeois masses, is the national question. At the Democratic Conference which was bamboozled by M. Tseretelli and his disciples, the "national" faction occupied a position second only in importance to that of the trade unions, and far in advance of that of the soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies in the proportion of votes given against the coalition (40 to 55).[1]
The Kerensky government, the government of the repression of the peasant rebellion, withdraws the revolutionary troops from Finland so as to strengthen the reactionary Finnish bourgeoisie. In Ukraine, the conflicts of the Ukrainians, and especially of the Ukrainian troops, with the government, are becoming more and more frequent.
Let us next consider the army, which, in time of war, plays an exceptional part in the whole life of the State. We have seen the complete breakaway of the Finnish troops and the Baltic Fleet from the government. We have seen the declaration of the non-Bolshevik officer, Dubassov, who says, in the name of all those at the front—and in a more revolutionary fashion than any Bolshevik, that the soldiers will not fight in the war any longer. We see government reports declaring that "nervousness" exists amongst the soldiers and that it is impossible to answer for "order" (that is to say, for the aid of the troops in repressing the peasant rebellion). Finally, we see the results of the elections at Moscow, where, out of 17,000 soldiers, 14,000 gave their vote to the Bolsheviks.[2]
