A REVERY ON THE ROAD FROM GATCHINA
THE central character in the story now finished — the advent of the Bolshevist régime marks the opening of a new tragedy — has every right to sympathetic and understanding consideration by the critics as he makes his hurried and unheroic exit. There will be little applause and much execration, even from his colleagues in the losing struggle with the Soviet, who may complain that he should have remained at his post until the end and not escaped through a side entrance. That particular insinuation would, I am convinced, be unjust, as there is no evidence thus far available to convict Mr. Kerensky either of cowardice or of duplicity. He was the victim of a conjunction of superior forces that rose like a tidal wave and tossed him and his government into the discard. But there is considerable ground for laying many fundamental and far-reaching blunders to his charge, some of which were the results of his own impetuous choice, others imposed upon him by circumstances which he could neither control nor dominate. The pity is that so much depended on one man’s judgment in a crisis when so many Russians — the Bolsheviki alone excepted — suffered from a paralysis of the intuitive faculties. Mr. Kerensky had no lieutenants or counselors capable of matching wits with the Machiavellian Cabinet that surrounded Lenin. Mussolini doubtless learned much wisdom from observation of the Russian Revolution and dared mightily. Had he flinched, there might have been a second Russia in Italy to-day.
In the first place, I believe Kerensky was miscast for a rôle which was, however, practically of his own choosing. His antecedents as a professed revolutionary of socialistic tendencies naturally drew him into the first Soviet, if not by political choice, at least by instinctive sympathy. As a consequence, during the period of uncertainty which followed the disappearance of the Tzar’s government, his personal allegiance was cast as much with the self-appointed Soviet as with the Provisional Government. It was pure rhetoric for any single party to assume to speak in the name of the Russian people ; the nation, politically dumb for centuries, had not yet spoken — except in one thundering shriek of exultation at finding itself free. Least of all did it give a mandate to the 45,585 members who composed the Bolshevist Party in early 1917.
That Kerensky’s stand would have great weight with public opinion is attested by the fact that it was largely his influence that caused the Grand Duke Michael to refuse the throne after the abdication of his brother, and issue his own renunciation.
The appearance, then, at such a critical moment, of an alternative government claiming equal jurisdiction with the Duma was the first deadly blow at national unity, so essential under the circumstance. If Mr. Kerensky had fathomed the psychology and the predominantly anarchic tendencies of his own people, he would have hesitated long before lending his person to a policy of challenge that eventually divided the country hopelessly. Freed from the age-old control of the tchinovniki, the broad masses of the people found themselves in a mood to experiment with their new and unaccustomed liberty. With no political training, without competent federal or municipal administrators, at the mercy of every silvertongued orator, however radical or destructive, they fell an easy prey to demagogy. It seems to me, therefore, that it was an initial blunder on Mr. Kerensky’s part to have remained a member of the competing Soviet, much less to have sponsored its creation, particularly as he held a seat in the Duma as the elected representative of a constituency in Saratov.
The five days from March 10 to March 15 were the most critical period in the history of modern Russia, and the direction which the state organization took during those days was to determine in a large measure the ultimate destiny of its people. The only legal depository of power and the sole executive entrusted with a popular mandate was the Duma, and it would seem that all farsighted men should have strengthened in every possible way the principle of legitimate authority as concentrated in that Assembly. The local Soviets could claim no more legal competency than might the Club of the Nobles or any similar private organization. Their claim to represent the working masses of Russia was seriously challenged by other revolutionary parties ; but their voice prevailed, simply and solely because their leaders had the shrewdness and will-power to impose their programme on less organized though equally representative groups of citizens. They dared to be strong before the nation could make up its mind who was right.
Mr. Kerensky defends his adhesion to the Soviet and his participation in its activities on the ground that the Duma had virtually ceased to function and had practically abdicated its leadership by dissolving at the command of the Tzar. Although, technically, the Duma may be said to have dissolved, in reality it never accepted the ukase of the Tzar and never actually dispersed. In point of fact, the authority of the Tzar had actually vanished, and his ukase was, to my way of thinking, absolutely void and harmless. The Duma, therefore, furnished the only basis of organized control then visible in Russia. In fostering the Soviet, in actually providing a room in which its members might meet, and by retaining his membership in both parliaments, Mr. Kerensky attempted to ride two horses, neither of which was trained or inclined to run with the other. The catastrophe which followed was inevitable.
The second fatal mistake — not so much Mr. Kerensky’s as that of the Provisional Government as a whole — was the ill-advised speech of Milyukov, with its claims for territorial annexations and its demand for the ultimate restoration of Constantinople to Russia. It was a mistake in psychology, as it missed entirely the state of mind prevailing among the people, war-worn and fatigued as they were, and unwilling to listen to any further imperialistic programmes. Better psychologists and more in touch with the realities, the Bolsheviki turned this pronouncement of the Foreign Minister into a strong argument for the overthrow of the Government. It must, however, in justice be said that Mr. Kerensky opposed this pronouncement, and his opposition led to the first crisis in the new Government.
The blame for Prikaz Number One, the order which destroyed discipline at the front and paved the way for the progressive demoralization of the army, was undoubtedly a prime cause leading to disunion and disaffection among the troops. Here again Mr. Kerensky disavows both responsibility and participation. The blame, according to his explanation, is to be placed exclusively at the door of the Soviet. However, reverting to my first contention, Mr. Kerensky as a leading member of the Soviet when this order was issued cannot be absolved from at least a proportionate blame for the disastrous effects which followed.
But whether or not the presence of Mr. Kerensky in the councils of the Soviet can fairly be interpreted as cooperation and condonation, he did at least have an unparalleled opportunity to suppress the menace entirely after the July uprising. He was never stronger and the Bolsheviki were never in greater discredit. Fully conscious, as he must then have been, of the ultimate goal and destructive programme of the Soviets, he yet found it possible to release all his Bolshevist prisoners in a moment of exuberance and permit them to return to their underground activities. Questioned by the present writer as to his reasons for not taking drastic action at that time, the ex-Premier insisted that the emotional and nervous state of the population cannot be left out of consideration. One of the first acts of the triumphant Revolution was to abolish the death penalty so often applied by the previous Government. How would it have been possible, he argued, to impose the ultimate punishment during those first months of freedom when men were ready to die to show their abhorrence of Tzaristic practices ? Such an act would have shocked and probably alienated the masses from the new Government !
The explanation is an interesting example of an ingrained Russian characteristic which is prone to fasten on the opposite extremes of conduct. There is a wide range of colors lying between the red at the end of a rainbow and the modest violet with which the spectrum begins. Mr. Chesterton, in mild satire, puts his finger on the same fact when he introduces into one of his essays a Russian who explains quite simply that he was obliged to kill his sister because her boots squeaked. The golden middle was never a favorite ground for Russian philosophy or Russian politics. Believing it inadvisable to apply the death sentence to the mutineers, — though in time of war they had struck at the very heart of the existing Government, — Mr. Kerensky proceeds to the opposite end of the possibilities and lets them all go scot-free. He must have known that they would have been the first to apply drastic measures to himself and to the whole Government, if the fortunes of war had placed them in the saddle. More than one student of Russian affairs regards this act of exaggerated clemency as a fatal error on the part of the Provisional Government, which should have taken protective measures to prevent the further activities of these avowed counter-revolutionaries. This does not mean that execution was inevitable, but that imprisonment and safekeeping were advisable.
Was it not another error to have postponed so long the convocation of the Constituent Assembly ? Against that free expression of the popular will not even Lenin’s magic could have prevailed. That master of divination knew as much ; he anticipated the date of the elections and launched his coup de surprise before the Assembly came into existence. When it did convene, he quietly sent the delegates back home — at the point of a bayonet.
The July offensive must also be enumerated among the contributory causes leading to the final disaster. To be sure, extraordinary pressure was brought to bear on Mr. Kerensky by the Allies, who urged him to give a practical proof of Russia’s solidarity with the war aims of the Entente. That solidarity and loyalty could, they argued, be best demonstrated by an offensive along the whole Russian front. We know that Mr. Kerensky responded to this idea with his usual ardor and inexhaustible energy. It is an open question, however, if he could not have served Russia better by plain talk to Sir George Buchanan and the other Allied ambassadors, who demanded the offensive. Here was a country which had suffered more than any other combatant through war casualties, moral bankruptcy, and domestic revolt. Not only the army, but the rear guard of every army, the civil population, was sick unto death and weary of suffering. To this must be added the administrative chaos that reigned within the country, where the collapse of the old régime had progressed so fast and so completely that no new machinery of government had as yet been substituted. For the nation to live, it was imperative that its vital organs should first be strengthened. Instead, tremendous losses were inflicted, discontent revived, and additional reasons provided for the Bolsheviki to demand a change of government. All that Mr. Kerensky could offer the troops was a renewal of warfare and a very shadowy hope of victory. But in case of defeat the most elemental political foresight might have prophesied exactly the revulsion which followed.
Then came the Kornilov affair ; the scales sank — on the left side, as confidence in Mr. Kerensky’s leadership evaporated on the right. He missed entirely the status quœstionis. He imagined the issue to lie between himself and Kornilov. He was wrong ; the people chose neither the one nor the other, but voted, constructively, for Lenin. The merits of the defense set forth by the parties to that historic dispute must await the decision of impartial Time ; but it would appear, even in the limited perspective of ten years, that Mr. Kerensky’s divided allegiance — one half to Socialism and one half to a strong national government — weakened his powers of judgment. In any case, the results of that unfortunate misunderstanding destroyed his already tenuous hold on the popular imagination, and opened the way for the flight from Gatchina.
The pursuit continues ; but the fugitive automobile draws farther and farther away, as the “friendly” chauffeur of the pursuing car suddenly discovers that his engine has “ broken down.”
As the tumult and the shouting dies, it becomes possible — at least for a nonpartisan observer — to disentangle the confused and intertwined causes of success and failure, in an endeavor to strike a balance between wisdom and folly. Our conclusions are no reflection on Mr. Kerensky’s valor, but on his statesmanship. And even in that capacity he can fairly offer, as he disappears from the scene, Macbeth’s defense : —
Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment ? No man.
For eight weary months Russia had been on the auction block. Lenin, nearer to the soil from which armies and electors are recruited, offered an alluring programme of peace, land, bread, ownership of factories, and supreme political power for the proletariat. Kerensky’s appeal for popular support was more nebulous, because less daring. His government, in the eyes of the impatient masses, stood for none of these fundamental necessities, despite the fact that a creditable array of basic reforms, civic, industrial, and agrarian, had been sponsored and many of them actually introduced by the Provisional Government. But his intent could not be clothed in the colorful language of his opponent. His rule suffered from the inevitable limitation which conscience and a sense of responsibility impose on dominant parties, but which a desperate minority ignores when unrestrained by moral or legal scruples. As morality and legality are of “ bourgeois origin,” the pragmatic Bolshevik, rejecting both, enters every contest with an immense advantage over all comers.
The experience of the Provisional Government was a confirmation of certain historical analogies. How often has it happened in the past — it will probably happen again — that a small and relatively insignificant proportion of a population has swept out an honest but irresolute majority by appealing nakedly to primitive instincts and elemental passions ? Did not the power once before descend from a Mirabeau to Danton, to Carrier, to Marat, and finally to Robespierre and Fouquier-Tinville, each of them of a deeper red than his predecessor ? So in Russia the control passed from Lvov and Milyukov to Kerensky, and then was wrested from his hand by Lenin and Trotsky and Felix Dzherzhinsky.
In 1789, as Paul Bourget reminds us, the Parliamentary theorists and Rules-of-Order experts spent the month of November wrangling endlessly over the most perfect type of Constitution. Should there be one chamber or two ? Should the King have the right to a veto ? And, if he had, should it be absolute or merely suspensory ? They deliberated and voted and deliberated on the vote. In the meantime, Paris starved ; the red days of October dawned, and the merciless logic of Madame Guillotine put a sharp end to the debates and the debaters.
The harangues of the Duma spellbinders were protracted without end in 1917, until, as Sorokin assures us, the orators dropped in their places, asleep. Kerensky himself was no exception. Indeed, as one foreign diplomat, then resident in Petrograd, puts it, “The only real Kerensky was the orator. Only when speaking did he exist — then he was Cæsar to himself and the throng . . . he spoke more and more, until at last he spoke all the time : from windows, from balconies and church doors, from automobiles and at theatres, for ministers, diplomats, delegations, soldiers, man and beast.”
While the Duma orators slept and Mr. Kerensky perorated, Lenin mounted Kshesinskaia’s balcony and repeated his five stereotyped words : “Bread, land, peace, factories, power.” It was meaty diet for stomachs that had been starved politically for three centuries, and terminated in delirious outbursts of collective psychosis.
And as for the Kornilov affair, did not that ill-starred adventure have historical precedents in the attempts of Lafayette and Dumouriez ?
Mr. Kerensky’s car slows down and stops. . . . Cautiously he explores the surrounding country with that penetrating look which, even to-day, arrests every eye that encounters it. . . . No one in sight. . . . He alights and disappears into the woods.
It is all over now — and astonishingly clear how and why it happened.
Lenin had simply outbid him, and Russia had dropped into his adversary’s lap like an overripe apple. That plot of land by the Volga was immeasurably more enticing to the Russian moujik than six feet of earth under alien skies in a graveyard on the slopes of the Carpathian Mountains. Those factories in Petrograd promised better life by far to the workmen than the finest prison camp in Germany. And the shirt of the Russian soldier, patched and verminous though it might be, lay closer to its owner’s heart than any hypothetical mantle of glory promised in the name of the Allies.