Sometimes, indeed, the newspapers were forbidden to print their speeches, but as a rule they were published, at least by the liberal papers, and so disseminated among the ma.s.ses. In these speeches the Social Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Laborites, and more daring of the Const.i.tutional Democrats mercilessly exposed the bureaucracy, so keeping the fires of discontent alive.
V
Of vast significance to mankind was the controversy that was being waged within the Socialist movement of Russia during these years, for this was the period in which Bolshevism was shaping itself and becoming articulate.
The words "Bolsheviki" and "Bolshevism" first made their appearance in 1903, but it was not until 1905 that they began to acquire their present meaning. At the second convention of the Social Democratic party, held in 1903, the party split in two factions. The majority faction, headed by Lenine, adopted the name Bolsheviki, a word derived from the Russian word "bolshinstvo," meaning "majority." The minority faction, which followed Plechanov, though he did not formally join it, was called, in contradistinction, the "Mensheviki"--that is, the minority. No question of principle was involved in the split, the question at issue being simply whether there should be more or less centralization in the organization.
There was no thought on either side of leaving the Social Democratic party.
It was simply a factional division in the party itself and did not prevent loyal co-operation. Both the Bolsheviki and the Mensheviki remained Social Democrats--that is, Socialists of the school of Marx.
During the revolutionary struggle of 1905-06 the breach between the two factions was greatly widened. The two groups held utterly irreconcilable conceptions of Socialist policy, if not of Socialism as an ideal. The psychology of the two groups was radically different. By this time the Lenine faction was no longer the majority, being, in fact, a rather small minority in the party. The Plechanov faction was greatly in the majority.
But the old names continued to be used. Although a minority, the Lenine faction was still called the Bolsheviki, and the Plechanov faction called the Mensheviki, despite the fact that it was the majority. Thus Bolshevism no longer connoted the principles and tactics of the majority. It came to be used interchangeably with Leninism, as a synonym. The followers of Vladimir Ulyanov continued to regard themselves as part of the Social Democratic party, its radical left wing, and it was not until after the Second Revolution, in 1917, that they manifested any desire to be differentiated from the Social Democrats.
Vladimir Ulyanov was born in 1870, at Simbirsk, in central Russia. There is no mystery about his use of the alias, Nikolai Lenine, which he has made world-famous and by which he chooses to be known. Almost every Russian revolutionist has had to adopt various aliases for self-protection and for the protection of other Russian Socialists. Ulyanov has followed the rule and lived and worked under several aliases, and his writings under the name "Nikolai Lenine" made him a great power in the Russian Socialist movement.
Lenine"s father was a governmental official employed in the Department of Public Instruction. It is one of the many anomalies of the life of the Russian Dictator that he himself belongs by birth, training, culture, and experience to the bourgeoisie against which he fulminates so furiously.
Even his habits and tastes are of bourgeois and not proletarian origin. He is an Intellectual of the Intellectuals and has never had the slightest proletarian experience. As a youth still in his teens he entered the University of St. Petersburg, but his stay there was exceedingly brief, owing to a tragedy which greatly embittered his life and gave it its direction. An older brother, who was also a student in the university, was condemned to death, in a secret trial, for complicity in a terrorist plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate Alexander III. Shortly afterward he was put to death. Lenine himself was arrested at the same time as his brother, but released for lack of evidence connecting him with the affair. It is said, however, that the arrest caused his expulsion from the university. Lenine was not the only young man to be profoundly impressed by the execution of the youthful Alexander Ulyanov; another student, destined to play an important role in the great tragedy of revolutionary Russia, was stirred to bitter hatred of the system. That young student was Alexander Kerensky, whose father and the father of the Ulyanovs were close friends.
Lenine"s activities brought him into conflict with the authorities several times and forced him to spend a good deal of time in exile. As a youth of seventeen, at the time of the execution of his brother, he was dismissed from the Law School in St. Petersburg. A few years later he was sent to Siberia for a political "crime." Upon various occasions later he was compelled to flee from the country, living sometimes in Paris, sometimes in London, but more often in Switzerland. It was through his writings mainly that he acquired the influence he had in the Russian movement. There is nothing unusual or remarkable about this, for the Social Democratic party of Russia was practically directed from Geneva. Lenine was in London when the Revolution of 1905 broke out and caused him to hurry to St. Petersburg.
As a young man Lenine, like most of the Intelligentsia of the period, gave up a good deal of his spare time to teaching small groups of uneducated working-men the somewhat abstract and intricate theories and doctrines of Socialism. To that excellent practice, no doubt, much of Lenine"s skill as a lucid expositor and successful propagandist is due. He has written a number of important works, most of them being of a polemical nature and dealing with party disputations upon questions of theory and tactics. The work by which he was best known in Socialist circles prior to his sensational rise to the Premiership is a treatise on _The Development of Capitalism in Russia_. This work made its appearance in 1899, when the Marxian Socialist movement was still very weak. In it Lenine defended the position of the Marxians, Plechanov and his group, that Russia was not an exception to the general law of capitalist development, as was claimed by the leaders of the People"s party, the _Narodniki_. The book gave Lenine an a.s.sured position among the intellectual leaders of the movement, and was regarded as a conclusive defense of the position of the Plechanov group, to which Lenine belonged. Since his overthrow of the Kerensky regime, and his attempt to establish a new kind of social state in Russia, Lenine has been frequently confronted by his own earlier reasoning by those who believe his position to be contrary to the true Marxian position.
From 1903 to 1906 Lenine"s views developed farther and farther away from those of his great teacher, George Plechanov. His position in the period of the First Duma can best be stated, perhaps, in opposition to the position of Plechanov and the Mensheviki. Accepting the Marxian theory of historical development, Plechanov and his followers believed that Russia must pa.s.s through a phase of capitalist development before there could be a social--as distinguished from a merely political--revolution. Certainly they believed, an intensive development of industry, bringing into existence a strong capitalist cla.s.s, on the one hand, and a strong proletariat, on the other hand, must precede any attempt to create a Social Democratic state. They believed, furthermore, that a political revolution, creating a democratic const.i.tutional system of government, must come before the social revolution could be achieved. They accepted the traditional Marxian view that the achievement of this political revolution must be mainly the task of the bourgeoisie, and that the proletariat, and especially the Socialists, should co-operate with the enlightened bourgeoisie in attaining that political revolution without which there could never be a Socialist commonwealth.
Plechanov was not blind to the dangers of compromise which must be faced in basing the policy of a movement of the ma.s.ses upon this reasoning. He argued, however, that there was no choice in the matter at all; that the iron law of historical inevitability and necessity determined the matter.
He pointed out that the bourgeoisie, represented by the Const.i.tutional Democrats in the political struggle, were compelled to wage relentless war upon Absolutism, the abolition of which was as absolutely essential to the realization of their cla.s.s aims as it was to the realization of the cla.s.s aims of the proletariat. Hence, in this struggle, the capitalist cla.s.s, as yet too weak to accomplish the overthrow of autocracy and Czarism, and the proletariat, equally dependent for success upon the overthrow of autocracy and Czarism, and equally too weak to accomplish it unaided, had to face the fact that historical development had given the two cla.s.ses which were destined to wage a long conflict an immediate unity of interest. Their imperative needs at the moment were not conflicting needs, but identical ones. To divide their forces, to refuse to co-operate with each other, was to play the game of the Czar and his a.s.sociates, argued Plechanov.
The Mensheviki favored partic.i.p.ation in the Duma elections and co-operation with the liberal and radical bourgeoisie parties, in so far as might be necessary to overthrow the autocracy, and without sacrificing Socialist principles. They pointed out that this position was evidently feared by the bureaucracy far more than the position of the extremists among the Social Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionists, who refused to consider such co-operation, and pointed to the fact that provocateurs in large numbers a.s.sociated themselves with the latter in their organizations and preached the same doctrine of absolute isolation and exclusiveness.
It will be seen that the position of the Mensheviki was one of practical political opportunism, an opportunism, however, that must be sharply distinguished from what Wilhelm Liebknecht used to call "political cow-trading." No man in the whole history of international Socialism ever more thoroughly despised this species of political opportunism than George Plechanov. To those who are familiar with the literature of international Socialism it will be unnecessary to say that Plechanov was not the man to deprecate the importance of sound theory as a guide to the formulation of party policies. For many years he was rightly regarded as one of the greatest theoreticians of the movement. Certainly there was only one other writer in the whole international movement who could be named as having an equal t.i.tle to be considered the greatest Socialist theorist since Marx--Karl Kautsky.
But Plechanov[1]--like Marx himself--set reality above dogma, and regarded movement as of infinitely greater importance than theory. The Mensheviki wanted to convene a great ma.s.s convention of representatives of the industrial proletariat during the summer of 1906. "It is a cla.s.s movement,"
they said, "not a little sectarian movement. How can there be a _cla.s.s_ movement unless the way is open to all the working cla.s.s to partic.i.p.ate?"
Accordingly, they wanted a convention to which all the factory-workers would be invited to send representatives. There should be no doctrinal tests, the sole qualification being membership in the working cla.s.s. It did not matter to the advocates of this policy whether a man belonged to the Social Democratic party or to any party; whether he called himself a revolutionist or anything else. It was, they said, a movement of the working cla.s.s, not the movement of a sect within the working cla.s.s.
They knew, of course, that in such a great ma.s.s movement there would probably be some theoretical confusion, more or less muddled thinking. They recognized, too, that in the great ma.s.s convention they proposed some Social Democratic formulations might be rejected and some others adopted which did not accord with the Marxian doctrines. But, quoting Marx to the effect that "One step of real movement is worth a thousand programs," they contended that if there was anything at all in the Marxian theory of progress through cla.s.s struggles, and the historic rule of the working cla.s.s, it must follow that, while they might make mistakes and go temporarily astray, the workers could not go far wrong, their cla.s.s interests being a surer guide than any amount of intellectualism could produce.
Lenine and his friends, the Bolsheviki, bitterly opposed all this reasoning and took a diametrically opposite position upon every one of the questions involved. They absolutely opposed any sort of co-operation with bourgeois parties of any kind, for any purpose whatever. No matter how progressive a particular bourgeois party might be, nor how important the reform aimed at, they believed that Social Democrats should remain in "splendid isolation,"
refusing to make any distinction between more liberal and less liberal, progressive and reactionary, groups in the bourgeoisie. Trotzky, who did not at first formally join the Bolsheviki, but was a true Bolshevik in his intellectual convictions and sympathies, fully shared this view.
Now, Lenine and Trotzky were dogmatic Marxists, and as such they could not deny the contention that capitalism must attain a certain development before Socialism could be attained in Russia. Nor could they deny that Absolutism was an obstacle to the development both of capitalist industry and of Socialism. They contended, however, that the peculiar conditions in Russia, resulting from the r.e.t.a.r.dation of her economic development for so long, made it both possible and necessary to create a revolutionary movement which would, at one and the same time, overthrow both autocracy and capitalism. Necessarily, therefore, their warfare must be directed equally against autocracy and all political parties of the landlord and capitalist cla.s.ses. They were guided throughout by this fundamental conviction. The policy of absolute and unqualified isolation in the Duma, which they insisted the Social Democrats ought to pursue, was based upon that conviction.
VI
All this is quite clear and easily intelligible. Granted the premise, the logic is admirable. It is not so easy, however, to see why, even granting the soundness of their opposition to _co-operation_ with bourgeois parties and groups in the Duma, there should be no political _compet.i.tion_ with them--which would seem to be logically implied in the boycott of the Duma elections. Non-partic.i.p.ation in the elections, consistently pursued as a proletarian policy, would leave the proletariat unrepresented in the legislative body, without one representative to fight its battles on what the world universally regards as one of the most important battle-fields of civilization. And yet, here, too, they were entirely logical and consistent--they did not believe in parliamentary government. As yet, they were not disposed to emphasize this overmuch, not, apparently, because of any lack of candor and good faith, but rather because the subst.i.tute for parliamentary government had not sufficiently shaped itself in their minds.
The desire not to be confused with the Anarchists was another reason.
Because the Bolsheviki and the Anarchists both oppose parliamentary government and the political state, it has been concluded by many writers on the subject that Bolshevism is simply Anarchism in another guise. This is a mistake. Bolshevism is quite different from and opposed to Anarchism.
It requires strongly centralized government, which Anarchism abhors.
Parliamentary government cannot exist except upon the basis of the will of the majority. Whoever enters into the parliamentary struggle, therefore, must hope and aim to convert the majority. Back of that hope and aim must be faith in the intellectual and moral capacity of the majority. At the foundation of Bolshevist theory and practice lies the important fact that there is no such faith, and, consequently, neither the hope nor the aim to convert the majority and with its strength make the Revolution. Out of the adult population of Russia at that time approximately 85 per cent. were peasants and less than 5 per cent. belonged to the industrial proletariat.
At that time something like 70 per cent. of the people were illiterate.
Even in St. Petersburg--where the standard of literacy was higher than in any other city--not more than 55 per cent. of the people could sign their own names in 1905, according to the most authentic government reports. When we contemplate such facts as these can we wonder that impatient revolutionaries should shrink from attempting the task of converting a majority of the population to an intelligent acceptance of Socialism?
There was another reason besides this, however. Lenine--and he personifies Bolshevism--was, and is, a doctrinaire Marxist of the most dogmatic type conceivable. As such he believed that the new social order must be the creation of that cla.s.s which is the peculiar product of modern capitalism, the industrial proletariat. To that cla.s.s alone he and his followers pinned all their faith and hope, and that cla.s.s was a small minority of the population and bound to remain a minority for a very long period of years.
Here, then, we have the key. It cannot be too strongly stressed that the Bolsheviki did not base their hope upon the working cla.s.s of Russia, and did not trust it. The working cla.s.s of Russia--if we are to use the term with an intelligent regard to realities--was and is mainly composed of peasants; the industrial proletariat was and is only a relatively small part of the great working cla.s.s of the nation. _But it is upon that small section, as against the rest of the working cla.s.s, that Bolshevism relies_.
Lenine has always refused to include the peasants in his definition of the working cla.s.s. With almost fanatical intensity he has insisted that the peasant, together with the petty manufacturer and trader, would soon disappear; that industrial concentration would have its counterpart in a great concentration of landownings and agriculture; that the small peasant holdings would be swallowed up by large, modern agricultural estates, with the result that there would be an immense ma.s.s of landless agricultural wage-workers. This cla.s.s would, of course, be a genuinely proletarian cla.s.s, and its interests would be identical with those of the industrial proletariat. Until that time came it would be dangerous to rely upon the peasants, he urged, because their instincts are bourgeois rather than proletarian. Naturally, he has looked askance at the peasant Socialist movements, denying that they were truly Socialist at all. They could not be Socialist movements in the true sense, he contended, because they lacked the essential quality of true Socialists, namely, proletarian cla.s.s consciousness.
Naturally, too, Lenine and his followers have always regarded movements which aimed to divide the land among the peasants, and so tend to give permanence to a cla.s.s of petty agriculturists, as essentially reactionary.
The exigencies of the struggle have forced them into some compromises, of course. For example, at first they were not willing to admit that the peasants could be admitted into their group at all, but later on they admitted some who belonged to the poorest cla.s.s of peasants. Throughout, however, they have insisted that the peasant cla.s.s as a whole was a cla.s.s of petty bourgeoisie and that its instincts and interests would inevitably lead it to side with the bourgeoisie as against the proletariat. Of course, this is a very familiar phase of Socialist evolution in every country. It lasted in Germany many years. In Russia, however, the question a.s.sumed an importance it never had in any other country, owing to the vast preponderance of peasants in the population. Anything more un-Russian than this theorizing cannot be well conceived. It runs counter to every fact in Russian experience, to the very basis of her economic life at this stage of her history. Lenine is a Russian, but his dogmas are not Russian, but German. Bolshevism is the product of perverted German scholasticism.
Even the industrial workers as a whole, in their present stage of development, were not to be trusted, according to the Bolshevist leaders.
They frankly opposed the Mensheviki when the latter proposed to hold their great convention of industrial workers, giving as their reason the fear that the convention majority would not consist of cla.s.s-conscious revolutionary Marxian Socialists. In other words, they feared that the majority would not be on their side, and they had not the time or the patience to convert them. There was no pretense of faith in the majority of the industrial proletariat, much less of faith in the entire working cla.s.s of Russia. The industrial proletariat was a minority of the working cla.s.s, and the Bolsheviki pinned their faith to a minority of that minority. They wanted to establish, not democracy, but dictatorship of Russia by a small, disciplined, intelligent, and determined minority of working-men.
The lines of cleavage between the Mensheviki and the Bolsheviki were thus clearly drawn. The former, while ready to join in ma.s.s uprisings and armed insurrections by the ma.s.ses, believed that the supreme necessity was education and organization of all the working-people. Still relying upon the industrial proletariat to lead the struggle, they nevertheless recognized that the peasants were indispensable. The Bolsheviki, on the other hand, relied exclusively upon armed insurrection, initiated and directed by desperate minorities. The Mensheviki contended that the time for secret, conspiratory action was past; that Russia had outgrown that earlier method. As far as possible, they carried the struggle openly into the political field. They organized unions, educational societies, and co-operatives, confident that through these agencies the workers would develop cohesion and strength, which, at the right time, they would use as their cla.s.s interests dictated. The Bolsheviki, on the other hand, clung to the old conspiratory methods, always mastered by the idea that a sudden _coup_ must some day place the reins of power in the hands of a revolutionary minority of the workers and enable them to set up a dictatorship. That dictatorship, it must be understood, was not to be permanent; democracy, possibly even political democracy, would come later.
As we have already noted, into the ranks of the terrorist Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviki spies and provocative agents wormed their way in large numbers. It is the inevitable fate of secret, conspiratory movements that this should be so, and also that it should result in saturating the minds of all engaged in the movements with distrust and suspicion. More than once the charge of being a provocateur was leveled at Lenine and at Trotzky, but without justification, apparently. There was, indeed, one incident which placed Lenine in a bad light. It belongs to a somewhat later period than we have been discussing, but it serves admirably to ill.u.s.trate conditions which obtained throughout the whole dark period between the two great revolutions. One of Lenine"s close friends and disciples was Roman Malinovsky, a fiery speaker of considerable power, distinguished for his bitter attacks upon the bourgeois progressive parties and upon the Mensheviki. The tenor of his speeches was always the same--only the interest of the proletariat should be considered; all bourgeois political parties and groups were equally reactionary, and any co-operation with them, for any purpose, was a betrayal of Socialist principle.
Malinovsky was trusted by the Bolsheviki. He was elected to the Fourth Duma, where he became the leader of the little group of thirteen Social Democrats. Like other members of the Bolshevik faction, he entered the Duma, despite his contempt for parliamentary action, simply because it afforded him a useful opportunity for agitation and demonstrations. In the Duma he a.s.sailed even a portion of the Social Democratic group as belonging to the bourgeoisie, succeeding in splitting it in two factions and becoming the leader of the Bolshevik faction, numbering six. This blatant demagogue, whom Lenine called "the Russian Bebel," was proposed for membership in the International Socialist Bureau, the supreme council of the International Socialist movement, and would have been sent as a delegate to that body as a representative of Russian Socialist movement but for the discovery of the fact that he was a secret agent of the Czar"s government!
It was proved that Malinovsky was a provocateur in the pay of the Police Department, and that many, if not all, of his speeches had been prepared for him in the Police Department by a former director named Beletzky. The exposure made a great sensation in Russian Socialist circles at the time, and the fact that it was Nikolai Lenine who had proposed that Malinovsky be chosen to sit in the International Socialist Bureau naturally caused a great deal of unfriendly comment. It cannot be denied that the incident placed Lenine in an unfavorable light, but it must be admitted that nothing developed to suggest that he was guilty of anything more serious than permitting himself to be outwitted and deceived by a cunning trickster. The incident serves to show, however, the ease with which the extreme fanaticism of the Bolsheviki played into the hands of the autocracy.
VII
While Bolsheviki and Mensheviki wrangled and disputed, great forces were at work among the Russian people. By 1910 the terrible pall of depression and despair which had settled upon the nation as a result of the failure of the First Revolution began to break. There was a new generation of college students, youthful and optimistic spirits who were undeterred by the failure of 1905-06, confident that they were wiser and certain to succeed.
Also there had been an enormous growth of working-cla.s.s organizations, large numbers of unions and co-operative societies having been formed in spite of the efforts of the government. The soul of Russia was once more stirring.
The end of 1910 and the beginning of 1911 witnessed a new series of strikes, such as had not occurred since 1905. The first were students"
strikes, inaugurated in support of their demand for the abolition of capital punishment. These were quickly followed by important strikes in the industrial centers for economic ends--better wages and shorter working-hours. As in the period immediately preceding the First Revolution, the industrial unrest soon manifested itself in political ways. Without any conscious leadership at all this would have been inevitable in the existing circ.u.mstances. But there was leadership. Social Democrats of both factions, and Socialists of other groups as well, moved among the workers, preaching the old, yet ever new, gospel of revolt. Political strikes followed the strikes for immediate economic ends. Throughout the latter part of 1911 and the whole of 1912 the revolutionary movement once more spread among the ma.s.ses.
The year 1913 was hardly well begun when revolutionary activities a.s.sumed formidable proportions. January 9th--Russian calendar--anniversary of b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday, was celebrated all over the country by great demonstrations which were really demonstration-strikes. In St. Petersburg fifty-five thousand workers went out--and there were literally hundreds of other smaller "strikes" of a similar nature throughout the country. In April another anniversary of the martyrdom of revolting working-men was similarly celebrated in most of the industrial centers, hundreds of thousands of workers striking as a manifestation against the government. The 1st of May was celebrated as it had not been celebrated since 1905. In the various industrial cities hundreds of thousands of workmen left their work to march through the streets and hold ma.s.s meetings, and so formidable was the movement that the government was cowed and dared not attempt to suppress it by force. There was a defiant note of revolution in this great uprising of the workers. They demanded an eight-hour day and the right to organize unions and make collective bargains. In addition to these demands, they protested against the Balkan War and against militarism in general.
Had the great war not intervened, a tragic interlude in Russia"s long history of struggle, the year 1914 would have seen the greatest struggle for the overthrow of Czarism in all that history. Whether it would have been more successful than the effort of 1905 can never be known, but it is certain that the working-cla.s.s revolutionary movement was far stronger than it was nine years before. On the other hand, there would not have been the same degree of support from the other cla.s.ses, for in the intervening period cla.s.s lines had been more sharply drawn and the cla.s.s conflict greatly intensified. Surging through the ma.s.ses like a mighty tide was the spirit of revolt, manifesting itself much as it had done nine years before.
All through the early months of the year the revolutionary temper grew. The workers became openly defiant and the government, held in check, doubtless, by the delicate balance of the international situation, dared not resort to force with sufficient vigor to stamp out the agitation. Ma.s.s meetings were held in spite of all regulations to the contrary; political strikes occurred in all parts of the country. In St. Petersburg and Moscow barricades were thrown up in the streets as late as July. Then the war clouds burst. A greater pa.s.sion than that of revolution swept over the nation and it turned to present a united front to the external foe.
CHAPTER III
THE WAR AND THE PEOPLE
I
The war against Austria and Germany was not unpopular. Certainly there was never an occasion when a declaration of war by their rulers roused so little resentment among the Russian people. Wars are practically never popular with the great ma.s.s of the people in any country, and this is especially true of autocratically governed countries. The heavy burdens which all great wars impose upon the laboring cla.s.s, as well as upon the petty bourgeoisie, cause even the most righteous wars to be regarded with dread and sorrow. The memory of the war with j.a.pan was too fresh and too bitter to make it possible for the ma.s.s of the Russian people to welcome the thought of another war. It cannot, therefore, in truth be said that the war with the Central Empires was popular. But it can be said with sincerity and the fullest sanction that the war was not unpopular; that it was accepted by the greater part of the people as a just and, moreover, a necessary war. Opposition to the war was not greater in Russia than in England or France, or, later, in America. Of course, there were religious pacifists and Socialists who opposed the war and denounced it, as they would have denounced any other war, on general principles, no matter what the issues involved might be, but their number and their influence were small and quite unimportant.
The one great outstanding fact was the manner in which the sense of peril to the fatherland rallied to its defense the different races, creeds, cla.s.ses, and parties, the great tidal wave of genuine and sincere patriotism sweeping everything before it, even the mighty, pa.s.sionate revolutionary agitation. It can hardly be questioned or doubted that if the war had been bitterly resented by the ma.s.ses it would have precipitated revolution instead of r.e.t.a.r.ding it. From this point of view the war was a deplorable disaster. That no serious attempt was made to bring about a revolution at that time is the best possible evidence that the declaration of war did not enrage the people. If not a popular and welcome event, therefore, the declaration of war by the Czar was not an unpopular one.