Russia & The Struggle for Peace/Chapter 13
Part IV: The Revolution
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE PEOPLE
THE suppression of the 1905 Revolution was followed by a period of the darkest reaction in Russia. The reaction, which followed immediately after the prorogation of the second Duma and Stolypin's coup d'état, had a curious and very sinister feature. Unlike the traditional reactionary policy of Russia, which contented itself with a series of brutal and clumsy persecutions of all revolutionary activities—with banishments, executions, imprisonments, and other tortures—this new reaction was marked by a series of reforms aiming at a systematic strengthening of all counter-revolutionary forces. The greatest energy and determination were put into the agrarian reforms, whose central purpose was to increase the class of small landowners in the villages. By this means it was hoped to frustrate the growth of the revolutionary movement, which had always been bound up with the struggle for land—either arising out of it, or developing into it. The traditional revolutionary ideals of Russia were expressed in the famous battle-cry ""land and freedom"; the more modern Socialist and revolutionary ideas only reversed the order, crying "freedom and land."
The period between 1907 and 1911 was the darkest and most critical time in Russia's history. It was however a period of remarkable prosperity in the economic sense. And from 1912 onwards a gradual decline of this feeling of social depression became manifest. Notably the Labour movement, which had been crushed out by the cruel hand of Stolypin, began to show some signs of returning life. Trade Unions and Co-operative Societies were making visible progress. The fourth Duma once more contained a group of Socialist deputies representing the workers and the peasants. Once more an open Labour Press appeared. The potential strength of the Labour forces at this time may be judged from the difficulty experienced by the Government in suppressing the Labour newspapers. They were suppressed and reappeared again and again. Collections for them were openly made in the factories. 1913 was undoubtedly a year of considerable political vigour and boldness. 1914 was a year of great hopes on the one hand and of grave anxiety on the other. Unrest was growing and was assuming an openly political and revolutionary character. Under pressure from the left, Russian Liberalism also was evincing more boldness in its attitude to the Government.
This social unrest and awakening coincided with the increasingly aggressive attitude of the militarists. Their sabre-rattling began to grow more rowdy. The War Office inspired articles in the Press and threw down the gauntlet to some unknown foe in an inspired article, "We are ready!" More space began to be devoted in the newspapers to questions of war and war-preparedness; some newspapers began to have permanent columns reserved for military affairs. The atmosphere of war was in fact diligently created many months before the war broke out. Here in the countries of the Entente it has generally been considered an established fact that the Russian Government took all possible measures to preserve peace. Only since Sukhomlinov's trial, on his evidence and that of Yanushkevich, the public in the Entente countries has discovered that the Russian war-party had its share of responsibility for the outbreak of the war. On the narrow technical question of "Who mobilisel first?" which has always been the bone of contention between the diplomacies of the Entente and the Central Empires, I may add that for the Russian people there never was any question about it, that this time at any rate Russia had not been left behind. In the first days of the war, the public were beaming- with delight, and seeing the rapidity of the mobilisation they rubbed their hands and said: "Well done! At last, for once in a way, we did not let ourselves be fooled!" Yanushkevich and Sukhomlinov said in their trial that the Tsar afterwards thanked them for not obeying his orders to postpone the mobilisation. They were too modest. They might with equal justification have said that "all Russia" thanked them.
The whole aspect of Russia in 1914, and especially the attitude of the militarists, goes to prove that the Government was looking for war. This is confirmed by certain documents which have lately been published. Baron Rosen, one of the prominent Russian diplomats (former Ambassador in Washington and in Tokio), who in the last years before the war was back in Russia as a member of the Council of the Empire, has affirmed[1] that the Government was actually trying to engineer a war in order to drown the growing ferment of revolution in a flood of war enthusiasm. But even though it were not proved that the Government was looking for war, the Government was certainly not looking for peace. If it had no share in the conflict which was instigated by the Austro-German diplomacy, at any rate it cannot be doubted that in July, 1914, the Russian Government could not help regarding this conflict as a happy chance of turning the tide from questions of internal policy to external passions. It is a fact that July, 1914, was the most revolutionary month since the suppression of the Revolution in 1905. The arrival of Poincaré in Petrograd a few days before war broke out coincided with labour unrest and strikes which exceeded anything that had taken place since Stolypin's coup d'état. No doubt the strike and the revolutionary excitement in Petrograd (there were actually barricades erected in the labour quarters of the town) were duly estimated in Potsdam, and together with the Irish crisis they no doubt constituted a new argument for the German war party. But it is equally true that this revolutionary excitement stimulated the war-spirit at Tsarskoe Selo and strengthened the Russian war party no less. And from their point of view they were making no mistake. No sooner had the war-fever begun, than the threatening spirit of revolution subsided. All currents of thought melted into one boundless enthusiasm.
The war enthusiasm which has been manifested throughout the world during the last four years is a deeply interesting social phenomenon. The most striking thing is the fact that this war enthusiasm was universal, and appeared in the same form and to the same degree in the different countries. The war enthusiasm in Belgium and in this country is easy to understand. It was in one case the enthusiasm of a violated nation which was out in defence of its very life; in the other case a noble feeling for the defence of a small and heroic nation. But how is one to explain the war enthusiasm in a country like Roumania, which entered the war after two years of haggling and bartering with both camps? How is one to explain the war enthusiasm in Bulgaria which, in alliance with Turkey, was going to fight against Russia, its traditional liberator from the oppression of the Turks? Yet all observers are agreed that the enthusiasm was tremendous, even in Roumania and Bulgaria, and that it was of the same kind as in the other belligerent countries.
What then was this enthusiasm? Whence did it come? No doubt the chief element in this universal enthusiasm for war is to be explained by purely elementary fighting instincts and crowd psychology. But, apart from this general human or rather animal element, it had a great cause in the discontent of the world. The years before the war were a critical epoch not only in Russia but everywhere. Something was ripening, as it were; something, had to happen in the world. We were approaching a point of transition. And the war came in to break the strain; all the accumulated tension found an outlet.
Let it be granted that in the case of other countries this interpretation of the prevailing war enthusiasm is merely speculative. At any rate, in Russia there is no doubt that the war was a presentiment of great things to come. The people set out to war, yet it was not victory but a free life which loomed large in their eyes. They had a very hazy conception of the way in which this would come about; but the desire, the ideal, was undoubtedly present. To the Russian people, Germany represented the bulwark of reaction, and the Russian Autocracy was continually drawing fresh power from its adherence to the German Court. More than once the Russian reaction brandished over the heads of the revolutionaries the threat of Kaiserism and its legions. The war against Germany was thus a war against reaction, against the source of reaction. It was revolution by means of war. That accounts for the war enthusiasm of the Russian people.
But this first war enthusiasm was very short-lived. The war against the sources of reaction unexpectedly strengthened the reaction in Russia. So also the hopes that the alliance with the free Western democracies would help to bring about a Liberal era in Russia were disappointed. The war strengthened reaction in all countries, but nowhere so much as in Russia. The very heights of reaction were reached in Russia during the early stages of the war. The greater the efforts of the armies, the more glorious their victories, the more powerful became the reaction and the more ruthless the suppression of the people. The first great military disaster in East Prussia led to a short wavering in the attitude of the reaction; but the steady advance of the armies into Galicia, their great successes in the Carpathians and the fall of Lemberg and Przemysl, once more gave the Government the necessary prestige and moral force to oppress the people. Only after defeat in Galicia was the Government really shaken, and forced to climb down and to adopt a more reasonable tone in its attitude to the people. The mutual interdependence between victory and reaction on the one hand, and defeat and Liberalism on the other, was only too clearly demonstrated during the first two years of war. This might well be expected to lead to defeatism, as it did in the Russo-Japanese war. But it is a most remarkable fact that defeatism never did appear in Russian progressive society during this war. There has been much talk about defeatism lately, and people have tried to accuse progressive Russia of being defeatist. Some publicists have not hesitated to represent Maxim Gorky as the head of the defeatist movement. But, as a matter of fact, there was no defeatist movement in Russia.[2] Neither Maxim Gorky nor any other progressive Russian was defeatist—for the simple reason that the defeat of Russia would mean a victory of Germany and would thu9 strengthen the very source of Russian reaction. What was growing was not defeatism but the revolutionary spirit. It was becoming more and more evident that the Russian Government must be defeated, not by the enemy armies, but by the Russian people itself. Honest observers mistook this revolutionary feeling for defeatism, and dishonest reporters deliberately misrepresented it as such.
This revolutionary spirit began down below among the workers. It grew and grew, taking hold of greater and greater parts of the population and rising higher and higher in the social scale. The spirit of revolution became so great and powerful that the more observant members of the propertied and ruling classes began to urge the Government to make reforms. The famous programme of the progressive block of the Duma and of the Council of the Empire was the outcome of this foreboding of the inevitable Revolution. At length only one question remained: revolution must come—was it possible to achieve it during the war? The people were reluctant, being afraid lest they might endanger both the State and the success of the Revolution by attempting revolution during the war. But their sufferings increased beyond measure, and at last they had no alternative. The Government provoked the Revolution.