REVOLUTION IN PETROGRAD: GUARDING THE TELEPHONE OFFICE
THE WOMEN'S "BATTALION OF DEATH" PARADED AT THE WINTER PALACE
Which they defended for the Provisional Government against the Bolshevists
TROTSKY ADDRESSING A CROWD IN PETROGRAD DURING A POPULAiR
DEMONSTRATION
THE SMOLNY INSTITUTE, PETROGRAD, '- HEADQUARTERS OF THE BOLSHEVISTS.
Guarded_ by Red Guards and Militia-Police
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Exploiting the Revolution
Even the Cossacks, who in 1905 had ruthlessly put down an incipient Revolution, were on the side of the working men. Who, indeed, could remain callous to their grievances?
By Our Petrograd Correspondent. We publish this morning the second of a series of articles from our Petrograd Correspondent, who has just reached this Country from Russia, bringing the latest news of the recent crisis.
It was a cry for “more bread” that started the Revolution. The Petrograd working men had grown tired of going dinnerless while their wives and children waited the whole day in the bitter cold, forming long, interminable queues at the provision shops. High war wages could not still hunger; the gramophones, pianos, and other unwonted luxuries that graced their homes, the expensive hats and clothes that bedecked their womenfolk, could not blind them to the fact that food was being withheld from them through culpable inefficiency on the part of the Government.
Everybody knew that there was food in abundance in the country. The newspapers did not attempt to conceal the fact. Three successive harvests had left enormous residues of grain, which formerly provided the staple of Russia’s export trade. it is true that the peasants had consumed more bread since the Edict on Temperance, but in the past this additional loaf had in reality been consumed by them in the form of vodka.
The angry working men found ready sympathizers among the troops in Petrograd. Many of the soldiers enrolled in the reserve regiments and battalions quartered in the metropolis had issued from the working class. Moreover, their rations had been reduced. Even the Cossacks, who in 1905 had ruthlessly put down an incipient Revolution, were on the side of the working men. Who, indeed, could remain callous to their grievances? Yet, however well founded the resentment of the poorer classes may have been - and it must be remembered that the severities of the Petrograd winter, coupled with greatly increased prices and scarcity of fuel, aggravated an unnecessary situation - there is good reason to believe that outside influences, the German propaganda, coupled with revolutionary ferment, had much to do with the sudden outbreak of bread riots in the early days of March.
It may be noted that the disappearance of the old regime has not led to any improvement in the food crisis; on the contrary, it has become more acute. In this food question, as in all other State problems, the Russian Revolution did not differ from other national cataclysms.
FEEDING HUGE ARMIES.
In common fairness it should be stated that the food problem imposed upon the bureaucracy was enormously enlarged during the half-year preceding the Revolution. Loyally responding to her duty as our Ally, Russia had called out huge numbers of men. The figure, if it could be stated here, would astonish us, accustomed though we have become to think in millions. All this host, distributed among the towns and cities of the Empire, had to be fed, clothed, housed, and warned. The collection, transport, and distribution of food, already so complicated by the inrush of over ten millions of refugees from the western border, taxed the central and local administrations to breaking point.
That the bureaucracy would fail was to be expected; that it managed to hold out so long is marvellous - especially when we remember that the Okhrana was there, constantly interfering with any sound, statesmanlike effort to deal with the crisis in the only way that could assure success - with the help of the people, in the closest touch and harmony with the farmers. Had the bureaucracy enjoyed freedom of action; had such capable, experienced statesmen as Krivoshein, holding a great record in rural legislation, enjoying the confidence of the Zemstvos (County Councils), been placed in full control, Russia might have weathered all the other ills of Okhranadom.
But Krivoshein had lost Imperial favour. Like other efficient administrators, he had left office, to make room for adventurers of the type of Khvostoff, Stuermer, or Protopopoff. Half-measures vere the order of the day. The menial task of collecting foodstuffs was entrusted to local government bodies. The war had necessitated some concessions. Zemstvos and municipal councils were permitted to form unions (soyuzy) to help the Government in all kinds of war work. The Okhrana saw therein a deadly peril for the autocracy. Every impediment was raised, funds were doled out meagrely, public cooperation was tolerated on the condition that things should return to their former state immediately the war was over. Instead of frank cooperation between the Government and the people, which would have mitigated the evils of war and strengthened the country, the war intensified the curse of disunion where it might have proved a blessing in disguise.
When the bread riots began in Petrograd the Government resorted to the usual bureaucratic expedient: it announced the formation of a special committee, promising to take immediate measures. But nobody had the slightest faith in this discredited method of solving a difficulty. The soldiers and the Cossacks being largely unreliable, Protopopoff, foreseeing a crisis, had organized the police into machine-gun companies, to be posted on public edifices in case of an emergency. The narrative of events that occurred during the great days of the Revolution is too well known to require recapitulation. Soldiers sacked the arsenal, and distributed arms to the working men. There was sporadic fighting between the disorganized troops; armed mobs were firing in all directions; the amateur police gunners played their weapons indiscriminately and mostly without effect. There was a colossal expenditure of ammunition and very little loss of life, not more than 200 people killed. And amid the din and confusion the old regime disappeared almost without a struggle.
BIRTH OF THE NEW ORDER.
The popular desire to be rid of the Okhrana had been satisfied. The Okhrana had ceased to exist. Together with the army of spies and the gendarmerie, the ordinary police had also disappeared. Protopopoff had made them impossible when he converted them into amateur gunners. All the sober-minded elements looked for guidance to the Duma, which had made itself the spokesman of the nation in demanding reforms. President Rodzianko hoped till the last that the Tsar would give way; he waited too long. The revolutionary outbreak gave almost immediate predominance to demagogues of extremist views.
Amid the turmoil and confusion one regiment, the Preobrajensky Guards, rallied to the support of the Duma. This encouraged Rodzianko to form a Provisional Government. For this purpose a committee representing all parties in the Duma was elected. But already a rival organization known as the Council (Soviet) of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates had arisen. The Socialist leaders Tchkheidze and Tsereteli, one a Georgian serf who had become a lawyer, the other a Georgian noble, and Kerensky, then an inconspicuous lawyer, were outwardly in control of the Soviet; behind them loomed an anonymous array of extremists.
None of these men were either workmen or soldiers. (When a peasants’ Soviet was afterwards formed, the directing spirits were also found to be non- peasants.) The Soviet did not object to the formation of a Provisional Government by the Duma. M Tchkheidze preferred, indeed, that the non-Socialists should assume all the responsibility, while the Soviet wielded all the Power. M Kerensky alone entered the Ministry. Such were the circumstances in which the Lvoff-Guchkoff-Milinkoff-Kerensky Coalition came into existence, and such they have remained throughout the numerous Ministerial combinations that have followed.
Meanwhile, the Tsar had been forced to abdicate in favour of his brother, and Kerensky had compelled the Grand Duke Michael to waive his rights. The autocracy, discredited by the Okhrana and by the Rasputin scandal, left few to regret it. The Provisional Government, dominated by the Soviet, tried to accomplish a hopeless task. Mob rule asserted itself in every direction. The workmen wanted enormous pay and little work; the troops in the rear were enjoying themselves, plundering, idling, talking politics, undesirous above all of going to the front; the peasants, surfeited with money saved during their enforced sobriety, were looking forward to a general division of landed property, and looting when so inclined. The Soviet maintained and consolidated its power by constant appeal to the instincts of the masses. Programmes of universal spoliation issued from its representatives in a steady stream.
DISORGANIZING THE WAR
From the Soviet also came the notorious Prikaz No. 1 (order of the day) to the troops enjoining upon them as free men to render no respect or obedience to their officers. This prikaz converted the Russian Army into an undisciplined mob. It was intended to do so. What cared the dreamers in the Soviet or the bolshevik agents of Germany who controlled Russian affairs for obligations of national honour or the interests of the State? They were too intent upon applying Socialistic theories in practice or in making a good thing out of the Revolution. They began by sending a wireless message appealing to their German brothers to lay down their arms; they then incited the Russian soldiers to fraternize with the enemy.
These schemes failing to attain their object, they next invented the theory of “no annexation, no indemnity,” hoping thereby to impress upon the Army the belief that there was nothing to fight about, and, lastly, they discovered a panacea for all ills in a great international Socialist Conference. When the police had been removed, the local demagogues assumed control. All forms of authority - the Zemstvos, the Law Courts, the governors, &c. - were superseded by committees, owning nominal allegiance to the Soviet, but refractory to the Provisional Government.
These innumerable committees were composed of workmen, peasants, petty lawyers, partly sincere enthusiasts, partly rogues. They drew self-appointed salaries from the local Treasury or levied contributions from the propertied class, which was studiously excluded from any share in this mock administration.
The Soviet in Petrograd appropriated over 700,000 roubles a month for salaries to its members. Practically no revenue entered the coffers of the State; such revenue as could be collected was absorbed by the local Soviet or committee. The committees were not satisfied with plunder; they hampered rural labour, forbidding the peasants to work except for prohibitive wages. Having done their utmost to terrorize the landowner, they made it impossible for the stoutest-hearted farmer to continue his loyal task of producing bread. It has come to pass that, the Exchequer being empty, Russia is printing 50,000,000 roubles of paper money daily to pay her way and that the printing press is not able to keep up with the demand for notes, owing to a constant depreciation in their value.
The committee system has been most disastrous in its effect upon industries. Workmen are too busy with politics to attend to their duties. Locomotives and rolling stock are not repaired. The complete paralysis of transport, the stoppage of all industries, owing to the shortage of fuel and raw materials, is a question of months or weeks, perhaps days. The output of munitions has declined by 80 per cent. All these facts and figures were brought out at the Moscow Conference. They do not constitute a State secret. In the Army the committee system has been attended by a sweeping decline in fighting value.
The food problem, upon which the autocracy came to grief, has been equally mismanaged under the Revolutionary regime. It has involved a colossal expenditure of something like 700,000,000 roubles in the organization of local food committees, mostly composed of people who had not the remotest. connexion with the business, but were merely revolutionaries. This organization has entirely failed in its purpose. It has not induced the peasant to sell his grain, nor has it assured a fair and just distribution of foodstuffs. FaIling into the hands of theorists or self-seekers, the Russian Revolution went far beyond the desires of the nation, and under their inexperienced or culpable guidance has assumed forms that are alien to the character or the development of the Russian people.
Battle of Agincourt, 1415, from the 'St. Alban's Chronicle' (vellum)
Battle of Agincourt, 1415, from the 'St. Alban's Chronicle' (vellum) 
