Bolshevism Part 9

From the first days there were ominous murmurings. Yet it must be confessed that the Provisional Government manifested much greater enlightenment than might have been expected of it and hastened to enact a program--quite remarkable for its liberality and vision; a program which, had it come from a government more truly representative in its personnel of revolutionary Russia, might, with one important addition, have served as the foundation of an enduring structure. On March 18th the Provisional Government issued a statement of its program and an appeal to the citizens for support. This doc.u.ment, which is said to have been the joint work of P.I. Novgorodtzev, N.V. Nekrasov, and P.N. Miliukov, read as follows:

CITIZENS: The Executive Committee of the Duma, with the aid and support of the garrison of the capital and its inhabitants, has succeeded in triumphing over the obnoxious forces of the old regime so that we can proceed to a more stable organization of the executive power, with men whose past political activity a.s.sures them the country's confidence.

The new Cabinet will base its policy upon the following principles: _First_.--An immediate and general amnesty for all political and religious offenses, including terrorist acts and military and agrarian offenses.

_Second_.--Liberty of speech and of the press; freedom for alliances, unions, and strikes, with the extension of these liberties to military officials, within the limits admitted by military requirements.

_Third_.--Abolition of all social, religious, and national restrictions.

_Fourth_.--To proceed forthwith to the preparation and convocation of a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, based on universal suffrage. This a.s.sembly will establish a stable universal regime.

_Fifth_.--The subst.i.tution of the police by a national militia, with chiefs to be elected and responsible to the munic.i.p.alities.

_Sixth_.--Communal elections to be based on universal, direct, equal, and secret suffrage.

_Seventh_.--The troops which partic.i.p.ated in the revolutionary movement will not be disarmed, but will remain in Petrograd.

_Eighth_.--While maintaining strict military discipline for troops in active service, it is desirable to abrogate for soldiers all restrictions in the enjoyment of civil rights accorded other citizens.

The Provisional Government desires to add that it has no intention of taking advantage of war conditions to delay the realization of the measures of reform above mentioned.

This address is worthy of especial attention. The generous liberalism of the program it outlines cannot be denied, but it is political liberalism only. It is not directly and definitely concerned with the great fundamental economic issues which so profoundly affect the life and well-being of the working cla.s.s, peasants, and factory-workers alike. It is the program of men who saw in the Revolution only a great epochal political advance. In this it reflects its bourgeois origin. With the exception of the right to organize unions and strikes--which is a political measure--not one of the important economic demands peculiar to the working cla.s.s is met in the program. The land question, which was the economic basis of the Revolution, and without which there could have been no Revolution, was not even mentioned. And the Manifesto which the Provisional Government addressed to the nation on March 20th was equally silent with regard to the land question and the socialization of industry.

Evidently the Provisional Government desired to confine itself as closely as possible to political democracy, and to leave fundamental economic reform to be attended to by the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. If that were its purpose, it would have helped matters to have had the purpose clearly stated and not merely left to inference. But whatever the shortcomings of its first official statements, the actual program of the Provisional Government during the first weeks was far more satisfactory and afforded room for great hope. On March 21st the const.i.tution of Finland was restored. On the following day amnesty was granted to all political and religious offenders. Within a few days freedom and self-government were granted to Poland, subject to the ratification of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly.

At the same time all laws discriminating against the Jews were repealed by the following decree:

All existing legal restrictions upon the rights of Russian citizens, based upon faith, religious teaching, or nationality, are revoked. In accordance with this, we hereby repeal all laws existing in Russia as a whole, as well as for separate localities, concerning:

1. Selection of place of residence and change of residence.

2. Acquiring rights of owners.h.i.+p and other material rights in all kinds of movable property and real estate, and likewise in the possession of, the use and managing of all property, or receiving such for security.

3. Engaging in all kinds of trades, commerce, and industry, not excepting mining; also equal partic.i.p.ation in the bidding for government contracts, deliveries, and in public auctions.

4. Partic.i.p.ation in joint-stock and other commercial or industrial companies and partners.h.i.+ps, and also employment in these companies and partners.h.i.+ps in all kinds of positions, either by elections or by employment.

5. Employment of servants, salesmen, foremen, laborers, and trade apprentices.

6. Entering the government service, civil as well as military, and the grade or condition of such service; partic.i.p.ation in the elections for the inst.i.tutions for local self-government, and all kinds of public inst.i.tutions; serving in all kinds of positions of government and public establishments, as well as the prosecution of the duties connected with such positions.

7. Admission to all kinds of educational inst.i.tutions, whether private, government, or public, and the pursuing of the courses of instruction of these inst.i.tutions, and receiving scholars.h.i.+ps.

Also the pursuance of teaching and other educational professions.

8. Performing the duties of guardians, trustees, or jurors.

9. The use of language and dialects, other than Russian, in the proceedings of private societies, or in teaching in all kinds of private educational inst.i.tutions, and in commercial bookkeeping.

Thus all the humiliating restrictions which had been imposed upon the Jewish people were swept away. Had the Provisional Government done nothing else than this, it would have justified itself at the bar of history. But it accomplished much more than this: before it had been in office a month, in addition to its liberation of Finns, Poles, and Jews, the Provisional Government abolished the death penalty; removed all the provincial governors and subst.i.tuted for them the elected heads of the provincial county councils; _confiscated the large land holdings of the Imperial family and of the monasteries_; levied an excess war-profits tax on all war industries; and fixed the price of food at rates greatly lower than had prevailed before. The Provisional Government had gone farther, and, while declaring that these matters must be left to the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly for settlement, had declared itself in favor of woman suffrage and of _the distribution of all land among the peasants, the terms and conditions of expropriation and distribution to be determined by the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly_.

The Provisional Government also established a War Cabinet which introduced various reforms into the army. All the old oppressive regulations were repealed and an attempt made to democratize the military system. Some of these reforms were of the utmost value; others were rather dangerous experiments. Much criticism has been leveled against the rules providing for the election of officers by the men in the ranks, for a conciliation board to act in disputes between men and officers over questions of discipline, and the abolition of the regulations requiring private soldiers to address officers by the t.i.tle "Sir." It must be borne in mind, however, in discussing these things, that these rules represented a great, honest effort to restore the morale of an army that had been demoralized, and to infuse it with democratic faith and zeal in order that it might "carry on."

It is not just to judge the rules without considering the conditions which called them forth.

Certainly the Provisional Government--which the government of the United States formally recognized on March 22d, being followed in this by the other Allied governments next day--could not be accused fairly of being either slothful or unfaithful. Its accomplishments during those first weeks were most remarkable. Nevertheless, as the days went by it became evident that it could not hope to satisfy the ma.s.ses and that, therefore, it could not last very long.

III

The Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates was pursuing its independent existence, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Tchcheidze, Skobelev, Tseretelli, and other moderate Social Democrats. As yet the Bolsheviki were a very small and uninfluential faction, lacking capable leaders.h.i.+p. There can be very little doubt that the Council represented the feelings of the great ma.s.s of the organized wage-earners far more satisfactorily than the Provisional Government did, or that it was trusted to a far greater degree, alike by the wage-earners of the cities and the peasants. A great psychological fact existed, a fact which the Provisional Government and the governments of the Allied nations might well have reckoned with: the Russian working-people, artisans and peasants alike, were aggressively cla.s.s conscious and could trust fully only the leaders of their own cla.s.s.

The majority of the Social Democratic party was, at the beginning, so far from anything like Bolshevism, so thoroughly constructive and opportunistic in its policies, that its official organ, _Pravda_--not yet captured by the Bolsheviki--put forward a program which might easily have been made the basis for an effective coalition. It was in some respects disappointingly moderate: like the program of the Provisional Government, it left the land question untouched, except in so far as the clause demanding the confiscation of the property of the royal family and the Church bore upon it. The Social Democratic party, reflecting the interests of the city proletariat, had never been enthusiastic about the peasants' claim for distribution of the land, and there had been much controversy between its leaders and the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary party, the party of the peasants. The program as printed in Pravda read:

1. A biennial one-house parliament.

2. Wide extension of the principle of self-government.

3. Inviolability of person and dwelling.

4. Unlimited freedom of the press, of speech, and of a.s.sembly.

5. Freedom of movement in business.

6. Equal rights for all irrespective of s.e.x, religion, and nationality.

7. Abolition of cla.s.s distinction.

8. Education in native language; native languages everywhere to have equal rights with official language.

9. Every nationality in the state to have the right of self-definition.

10. The right of all persons to prosecute officials before a jury.

11. Election of magistrates.

12. A citizen army instead of ordinary troops.

13. Separation of Church from state and school from Church.

14. Free compulsory education for both s.e.xes to the age of sixteen.

15. State feeding of poor children.

16. Confiscation of Church property, also that of the royal family.

17. Progressive income tax.

18. An eight-hour day, with six hours for all under eighteen.

19. Prohibition of female labor where such is harmful to women.