The Russian Turmoil; Memoirs: Military, Social, and Political. Anton Ivanovich Denikin
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“He lived and died for the good of his country.”
CHAPTER X.
The Power—The Duma—The Provisional Government—The High Command—The Soviet of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates.
Russia’s exceptional position, confronted on the one hand with a world war and on the other with a revolution, made the establishment of a strong power an imperative necessity.
The Duma, which, as I have already said, unquestionably enjoyed the confidence of the country, refused, after lengthy and heated discussions, to head the Revolutionary power. Temporarily dissolved by the Imperial ukaze of February 27th, it remained loyal, and “did not attempt to hold an official sitting,” as it “considered itself a legislative institution of the old régime, co-ordinated by fundamental law with the obviously doomed remnants of autocracy.” (Miliukov, History of the Second Russian Revolution.) The subsequent decrees emanated from the “private conference of the members of the Duma.” This body elected the “temporary Committee of the Duma,” which exercised supreme power in the first days of the Revolution.
When power was transferred to the Provisional Government, the Duma and the Committee retired to the background, but did not cease to exist, and endeavoured to give moral support and a raison d’être to the first three Cabinets of the Government. On May 2nd, during the first Government crisis, the Committee still struggled for the right to appoint members of the Government; subsequently it reduced its demands to that of the right to participate in the formation of the Government. Thus, on July 7th, the Committee of the Duma protested against its exclusion from the formation of a new Provisional Government by Kerensky, as it considered such a course as “legally inadmissible and politically disastrous.” The Duma, of course, was fully entitled to participate in the direction of the life of the country, as, even in the camp of its enemies, the signal service was recognised which the Duma had rendered to the Revolution “In converting to it the entire front and all the officers” (Stankevitch: Reminiscences). There can be no doubt that, had the Soviet taken the lead in the Revolution, there would have been a fierce struggle against it, and the Revolution would have been squashed. It might, perhaps, have then given the victory to the Liberal Democracy, and would have led the country to a normal evolutionary development. Who knows?
The members of the Duma themselves felt the strain of inactivity which was at first voluntary and later compulsory. There were many absentees, and the President of the Duma had to combat this attitude. Nevertheless, the Duma and the Committee were quite alive to the importance of the trend events were taking. They issued resolutions condemning, warning, and appealing to the common sense, the heart, and the patriotism of the people, of the Army, and of the Government. The Duma, however, had already been swept aside by the Revolutionary elements. Its statesmanlike appeals, full of the clear consciousness of impending perils, had ceased to impress the country, and were ignored by the Government. Even a Duma so peaceable that it did not even fight for power aroused the apprehensions of the Revolutionary Democracy, and the Soviets led a violent campaign for the abolition of the Council of the State and of the Duma. In August the Duma relaxed its efforts in issuing proclamations, and when Kerensky dissolved the Duma at the bidding of the Soviets, nineteen days before the expiration of its five years’ term, on October 6th, this news did not produce any appreciable effect in the country. Rodzianko kept alive for a long time the idea of the Fourth Duma or of the Assembly of all Dumas as the foundation of the power of the State. He stuck to this idea throughout the Kuban campaigns and the Ekaterinodar Volunteer period of the anti-Bolshevik struggle. But the Duma was dead. …
None can tell whether the Duma’s abdication of power was inevitable in the days of March, and whether it was rendered imperative by the relative strength of the forces that struggled for power, whether the “class” Duma could have retained the Socialist elements in its midst and have continued to wield a certain influence in the country, acquired as a result of its fight against autocracy. It is at least certain that, in the years of trouble in Russia, when no normal, popular representation was possible, all Governments invariably felt the necessity for some substitute for this popular representation, were it only as a kind of tribune from which expression could be given to different currents of thought, a rock upon which to stand and to divine moral responsibilities. Such was the “Temporary Council of the Russian Republic” at Petrograd in October, 1917, which, however, had been started by the Revolutionary Democracy, as a counter-blast to the contemplated Bolshevik Second Congress of Soviets. Such was the partial constituent Assembly of 1917, which was held on the Volga in the summer of 1918, and such the proposed convocation of the High Council and Assembly (Sobor) of the Zemstvos in the South of Russia and in Siberia in 1919. Even the highest manifestation of collective dictatorship—“the Soviet of People’s Commissars”—which reached a level of despotism and had suppressed social life and all the live forces of the country to an extent unknown in history, and reduced the country to a graveyard, still considered it necessary to create a kind of theatrical travesty of such a representative institution by periodically convoking the “All-Russian Congress of Soviets.”
The authority of the Provisional Government contained the seed of its own impotence. As Miliukov has said, that power was devoid of the “symbol” to which the masses were accustomed. The Government yielded to the pressure of the Soviet, which was systematically distorting all State functions and making them subservient to the interests of class and party.
Kerensky, the “hostage of Democracy,” was in the Government. In a speech delivered in the Soviet he thus defined his rôle: “I am the representative of Democracy, and the Provisional Government should look upon me as expressing the demands of Democracy, and should particularly heed the opinions which I may utter.” Last, but not least, there were in the Government representatives of the Russian Liberal Intelligencia, with all its good and bad qualities, and with the lack of will-power characteristic of that class, the will-power which, by its boundless daring, its cruelty in removing obstacles, and its tenacity in seizing power, gives victory in the struggle for self-preservation to class, caste and nationality. During the four years of the Russian turmoil the Russian Intelligencia and Bourgeoisie lived in a state of impotence and of non-resistance, and surrendered every stronghold; they even submitted to physical extermination and extinction. Strong will-power appeared to exist only on the two extreme flanks of the social front. Unfortunately it was a will to destroy and not to create. One flank has already produced Lenin, Bronstein, Apfelbaum, Uritzki, Dzerjinski, and Peters. … The other flank, defeated in March, 1917, may not yet have said its last word. The Russian Revolution was undoubtedly national in its origin, being a mode of expressing the universal protest against the old régime. But, when the time came for reconstruction, two forces came into conflict which embodied and led two different currents of political thought, two different outlooks. According to the accepted phrase, it was a struggle between the Bourgeoisie and the Democracy. But it would be more correct to describe it as a struggle between the Bourgeois and the Socialist Democracies. Both sides derived their leading spirits from the same source—the Russian Intelligencia—by no means numerous and heterogeneous, not so much in respect of class and wealth as of political ideas and methods of political contest. Both sides inadequately reflected the thoughts of the popular masses in whose name they spoke. At first these masses were merely an audience applauding the actors who most appealed to its impassioned, but not altogether idealistic, instincts. It was only after this psychological training that the inert masses, and in particular the Army, became, in the words of Kerensky, “an elemental mass melted in the fire of the Revolution and … exercising tremendous pressure which was felt by the entire organism of the State.” To deny this would be tantamount to the denial, in accordance with Tolstoi’s doctrine, of the influence of leaders upon the life of the people. This theory has been completely shattered by Bolshevism, which has conquered for a long time the masses of the people with whom it has nothing in common and who are inimical to the Communist creed.
In the first weeks of the new Government the phenomenon became apparent, which was described in the middle of July by