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Title: The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement

Authors: Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
        Frank Alfred Golder, Robert Joseph Kerner

Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8465]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on July 14, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUSSIAN REVOLUTION ***




Produced by David Starner, David Widger
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

BY

ALEXANDER PETRUNKEVITCH
SAMUEL NORTHRUP
HARPER FRANK ALFRED GOLDER



THE JUGO-SLAV MOVEMENT

BY

ROBERT JOSEPH KERNER



PREFACE

Whatever may be its final outcome the Russian Revolution of 1917 bids fair
to remain one of the great events of modern history. Its consequences are
still immeasurable and today to many they appear as fraught with menace as
with hope. They have within less than a year led a mighty empire to the
brink of dissolution and no man can foretell where and how the process
will end for worse or for better. The Russian Revolution saved the Central
Powers at the moment when their prospect looked darkest, but on the other
hand it facilitated the entrance of the United States into the war as one
for liberty and democracy. Time has yet to show whether the loss or the
gain has been the greater for the Allied cause and for mankind. It will be
paid for at a heavy price but our hope cannot easily be shaken that sooner
or later an event so full of promise for the misruled millions of the
autocratic empire of the Tsar will mark a step forward, not backward, in
the progress of the world. The whole story of the sudden out-break in
Petrograd which in little more than a day swept away the fabric of imperial
government will not soon be told, if ever. All real information on the
subject is timely and valuable. We need such studies as those contained in
the present volume, in order that we may understand what has happened, and
why it has happened.

The rise of the modern Jugo-Slav movement offers us a very different
picture. The subject and even the name are new to most people, the scale
is much smaller; the events have been less dramatic. But the unconquerable
resistance which a small disjointed nationality has offered throughout the
ages to ill fortune, oppression, and to attempts to obliterate it entirely
arouses our admiration. The movement too was intimately connected with the
outbreak of the present world war which cannot be understood without taking
it into account. It still represents only an ardent hope for the future but
when the day of peace and justice comes no permanent allotment can be made
of the lands east of the Adriatic that shall not give it at least some
satisfaction.

ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE.




MARCH 18, 1918. THE ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUALS IN THE LIBERATING MOVEMENT IN
RUSSIA THE ROLE OF THE NTELLECTUALS IN THE LIBERATING MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA

BY ALEXANDER PETRUNKEVITCH

In an interview dated November 21, and published in the _New York Times_ in
a special cable from Petrograd, Leon Trotzky in defending the attitude of
the people toward the Bolsheviki _coup d'etat_ is reported to have said
substantially the following: "All the bourgeoisie is against us. The
greater part of the intellectuals is against us or hesitating, awaiting a
final outcome. The working class is wholly with us. The army is with us.
The peasants, with the exception of exploiters, are with us. The Workmen's
and Soldiers' government is a government of workingmen, soldiers, and
peasants against the capitalists and landowners."

On the other hand my father, Ivan Petrunkevitch, floorleader of the
Constitutional Democratic party in the first Duma and since that time owner
and publisher of the Petrograd daily _Rech_ writes in a private letter
dated June 12: "... the present real government, i. e., the Council of
Soldiers' and Workmen's Deputies, whose leaders are neither soldiers nor
workmen, but intellectuals, etc." Nothing has happened during the months
intervening between the letter and the interview to change the composition
of the Council appreciably. It is true that Kerensky who was vice-president
of the Council has been meanwhile deposed; that Tshcheidze had to
relinquish the presidency in the Council to Trotzky long before Kerensky's
downfall; but the leaders of the Council still are intellectuals, are well
educated men, some of them well known writers on political and economic
questions and withal very different from the masses which they lead and
which they purport to represent. In justice to those who had to give way to
the Lenine-Trotzky crowd of supporters, I wish to state emphatically that
I do not want to put them on the same plane. Tseretelli, Plekhanov,
Tshcheidze, and their co-workers are men of great courage, high ideals, and
personal integrity. On the other hand their successors in power are men of
a totally different type. The integrity of many of their number has been
openly questioned, the accusations, published & broadcast, remained
unanswered, and no suit for libel was brought by the men thus accused.
Lenine was put under suspicion of having accepted German help and of having
planned with Germany's agents the disorganization of the Russian army.
It has been even charged on apparently good evidence that the leaflets
distributed at the front were printed with German money. Trotzky was
accused by Miliukov in the _Rech_ (June 7) of having received $10,000 from
German-Americans for the purpose of organizing the attack on Kerensky's
government. Ganetsky was forced to leave Denmark by an order of the Danish
government, having been convicted of dishonest dealings in a Danish court.
Zinoviev is accused of forgery. Others are also under suspicion which has
been only increased by the arrest and imprisonment of Burtzev who is known
for his untiring efforts to hunt down traitors to the cause of the Russian
Revolution and who had important evidence in his possession. It is also a
remarkable fact that the majority of the present leaders are known
broadly only under assumed names. Lenine's true name is Uljanov,
Trotzky's--Bronstein, Zinoviev's--Apfelbaum, Sukhanov's--Gimmer,
Kamenev's--Rosenfeld, Steklov's--Nakhamkis, and a number of others whose
identity is not even always known. Trotzky's assertion that the Workmen's
and Soldiers' Government is a government of workingmen, soldiers, and
peasants is therefore nothing but a perversion of facts.

There is, however, nothing extraordinary in the fact itself that
intellectuals are the real leaders of all Russian parties. Better education
and wider knowledge of the affairs of the world have always appealed to
the dark masses who realize only dimly their own desires and grasp at any
concrete formulation of reforms which contains a tangible promise or seems
to express those desires. At the same time they often put their own meaning
into the words of their leaders, which is true even of factory workers in
the larger cities. As for the peasants, representing about 90 per cent of
the entire population, they are still very poorly educated, questions
of national import remain outside their horizon, and even their language
is not the language of the educated Russian, inasmuch as it lacks the rich
vocabulary of modern life and is devoid of the very conceptions to which
this vast treasury of words applies. Their mind, great as it is in its
potentialities, still moves in the furrows of familiar ideas abhorring
things too much at variance with inherited traditions or actual experience.
Yet in the turmoil of revolutionary activity the peasants are going to have
their say and may become the decisive factor, because they are voters and
are casting their votes for those leaders whose words they believe to
contain the greatest promise and the least menace of a general disruption
of their accustomed mode of life.

We are thus brought back, for the present at least, to the necessity of
recognizing that even the state of anarchy under which Russia is laboring,
even the rule of the renowned proletariat so much trumpeted about by Lenine
and Trotzky, is in reality the work of intellectuals, an answer of the
masses to the call of their leaders, a groping for principles beyond their
perception.

It suffices a very casual examination of the programs and resolutions of
various political parties to see the truth of this statement. They are
expressive of the opinions of the leaders, not of the masses; are couched
in the language of the educated Russian, not in that of the workman or
peasant and, except for the concluding slogans like "Peace, Bread, and
Land," are alien to the very spirit of the masses. In this respect all
parties are confronted with the same difficulty since all strive to get
the support of the masses, yet have to express principles evolved through
careful and extensive study of national, political, and economic problems,
strange to the uneducated mind. For the same reason the methods of
surmounting the difficulty differ in many respects and are characteristic
of each party.

The Conservative Intellectuals of Russia early realized the necessity of
meeting the peasant on his own ground and the advantage of appealing to
him in his own language. The idea of a benevolent ruler, an all-suffering
motherland, and an all-unifying church exercised a powerful appeal upon the
imagination, for a long time superseding and forcing into the background
the growing, elemental, and unfulfilled longing for more land. The
ideology of a perfect monarchy is so simple and its shortcomings so easily
attributable to dishonesty of officials, that it answered the peasant's
thoughts as long as he was not able to see the folly of distinguishing
between the system and its realization, but separated in his mind the image
of his loving monarch from the cruel reality of everyday life as he still
distinguishes between the faith and the priest. The great mistake of all
conservatives is that they seek to bring about a state of perfect justice
by improving only the quality of the ruling body without changing the
conditions of life of the ruled mass. Yet even so the Conservatives had
quite a following among the peasants up to the time of the revolution of
1917 and in a way may still have a future before them.

The Octoberists find no support in the masses and do not make any serious
attempt to gain it. They frankly acknowledged themselves as the party of
industry and trade, having no wider interests at heart than the maintenance
of order and law throughout the country. Their leaders were forced into
a revolutionary attitude only at the time when there was danger of a
universal collapse of Russia if the tsar's government persisted, and they
may be forced to join in a counter-revolution, if their interests are again
endangered. Their ideology is that of a capitalistic class and their power
depends entirely on the future development of industry and trade in Russia.
For the present they are nowhere. Unable to find a new basis for their
activity in place of class interest, they lack unity of purpose and are
deserted by their own former supporters among their employees. Trade and
industry are disorganized and the party may never be resurrected.

The Constitutional Democrats are in this respect better off. They find
their support chiefly among more or less educated people of various
pursuits: lawyers, bankers, brokers, journalists, teachers, artists,
scientists, etc. Their program embraces the interests of all classes and
demands political, judicial, economic, industrial and agrarian legislation
of a very radical and extensive kind. Their horizon of vision includes the
sufferings and aspirations of the often incongruous elements of the vast
whole, but their ideology is still based on the long outworn idealistic
capitalism and for this reason alone does not and cannot appeal to
not-owning classes. Their agrarian program is in this respect the most
striking example. It is worked out in great detail and is aimed at a
betterment of the condition of peasants without deep injury to the present
landowners. It recognizes the right of the peasant to more land, it
provides for future state ownership of land to prevent it from falling into
wrong hands, but does not condemn the principle of landownership, nor the
injustice of present ownership, and for that reason elaborates a method of
compensation for compulsorily alienated land through universal taxation.

To avoid excessive burden to the impoverished peasant the compensation is
to be in the shape of bonds representing the average value of the land in
each particular case, only the interest on these bonds to be paid yearly
from universal taxes--a topsy-turvy mortgage system, as it were, in which
the state becomes the proprietor and mortgagor of the land, while its
present owners are turned into forced mortgagees. Under this system the
peasants will get all land available, but 90 per cent will have to pay for
what is owned by a small fraction of even the remaining 10 per cent of the
entire population. The proposed scheme proved to be too radical for the
tsar's government in 1906 and caused the downfall of the first Duma. It
provoked at the time bitter comment in Germany also, where the conservative
and national-liberal press accused the Russian Constitutional Democratic
party of putting forward impossible demands and of attacking the very
principle of property ownership. Yet the principle underlying the proposed
reform is unquestionably capitalistic and is the chief cause of the hatred
and contempt which the party enjoys on the part of Social-Democrats.

In the beginning of the sixties the conservative land committee appointed
by Alexander II, composed of hereditary landowners, avowed enemies of any
economic liberation of peasants, out of fear that private ownership of land
might enrich the peasants and make them dangerous to the established order,
devised a scheme of communal ownership of land and unconsciously taught
the peasants the principles of socialism. In 1907 Constitutional Democrats
opposed the bill of the Government for the dissolution of land communities
and substitution of private for communal land ownership at the request of
individual peasants. The objection raised was on the ground that peasants
suddenly possessed of a chance to get ready money would sell their land
to a few exploiters and being unable to put it to good use would rapidly
become paupers. The best men in the Duma opposed Stolypin's bill, and the
law was introduced by stealth and promulgated during a forced recess of the
Duma. Contrary to expectation the law neither led to the results desired
by the Government, nor to those feared by Constitutional Democrats. It
remained a dead letter. Few members of peasant communities applied for
separation. The Government tried to boost its scheme by building at its own
expense model, fake peasant homes. The peasants had already their own idea
as to remedies in regard to land shortage and did not want any substitute.

The difficulty of making the peasant respect the principle of private
ownership of land is due to many causes. The most liberal minded landowners
were usually those who spent their winters in various occupations in large
cities and used their estates as summer homes and a partial source of
income. The work of supervision was only too often intrusted to utterly
unscrupulous and uneducated managers belonging to the peasant class, while
the neighboring peasants were employed as day laborers in the field and
garden. This kind of labor was already available, because peasants were
unable to derive sufficient income from their own land to pay the heavy
taxes and to support their families. Scarcely any landowners understood
anything of agriculture and few paid any attention to it. I know splendid
estates which brought in miserable incomes, not normal even under the
antiquated system of four year crop rotation and quite absurd if measured
by standards of modern American farming, yet sufficient to place at the
disposal of the owners a splendid mansion in Moscow or Petrograd and a no
less splendid summer home on their estate. There, during the hot summer
days, the owners were enjoying their comfort in idleness and talking of
reforms necessary for the benefit of the peasants, while peasant women were
cutting the wheat for them with sickles, stooping and sweating under the
scorching rays of the sun. The superintendents of those estates enriched
themselves at the expense of the blind or careless and carefree owners
under the very eyes of the peasants who hated the superintendents, pitied
or despised the liberal owners, as the case might be, and gloomily compared
their own poverty and labor with the ease and wealth of their employers.

The more thrifty and less liberal owners, who remained the greater part
of the year on their estates, were perhaps more respected but still less
liked. Any attempt at careful management of the estate was invariably
considered to be a sign of stinginess or of hardheartedness. The idea of
property is not clearly defined in the mind of the average peasant who
considers plants that are not planted but grow wild to be a gift of God.
In disputes involving such cases the line between rightful possession and
theft is difficult to draw, and men who took the controversy to court were
invariably hated. A glaring example of this kind was an otherwise
liberal minded landowner, a well known professor of sociology, who spent
three-quarters of a year in lecturing at a foreign university of which he
was a member and who was finally murdered on his own estate.

The home life of even liberal intellectuals was another barrier between
them and the masses. Not only was coarse food considered to be good enough
for domestics, but they seldom, if ever, had a decent corner for themselves
in the house and their miserable wages were out of all proportion with the
long hours of service required. Many families had guests almost daily, the
company sitting around a samovar, discussing and conversing until one or
two in the morning, while the sleepy domestics were stealing a nap in the
anteroom, ready to appear at the call of the mistress. The table had to
be cleared after the guests and the family retired for the night and the
breakfast had to be prepared, boots polished, stoves heated, rooms cleaned
in the early morning. For the master might rest until ten or eleven, but
the children have to be at school by eight and the servants must be ready
to serve them. And though many families kept professional servants, the
country homes depended almost entirely in winter as well as in summer on
local help.

Attempts to improve the condition of peasants were numerous and in some
respects successful, but found an obstacle on the one hand in the attitude
of the Government and on the other in the conservatism and suspicion of the
peasants themselves. Fire insurance and cooperative enterprises helped to a
certain degree, but an almost complete absence of expert agriculturists in
the ranks of the landowners prevented them from demonstrating on their
own estates the value of applied knowledge as well as from teaching the
peasants how to increase the productivity of the land through intensive
farming. Thus it came to pass that the vast majority of landowners, both
conservative and liberal, remained strangers to the people among whom
they lived, whose labor they employed, and for whose welfare many were in
earnest concerned. The Constitutional Democratic party is strong in the
cities. In the country it has no followers and in the sweeping incendiary
fires of 1905-06 estates were burned which belonged in several cases to men
who spent their life in fighting for freedom against the tsar's government.

No less unfortunate is the party in its relation to the class of factory
workers. That part of its program which relates to the labor question
embraces a number of important reforms meeting almost all demands of the
working class. The barrier between them is the capitalistic principle. A
perusal of the lists of Constitutional Democrats who have subscribed large
sums for the Russian liberty loan will show why workmen speak of them as
capitalists even though the party has accepted the principle of progressive
income taxation. There is a feeling of intense hatred toward all
Constitutional Democrats on the part of all workmen.

Nothing is more instructive than the rapid change in the position which the
Constitutional Democratic party occupied in the eyes of the people after
the revolution. Before the outbreak of hostilities all parties were against
war. But soon, under the influence of the German methods of warfare in
Belgium, France, and Russia, the feeling changed. Even the Mensheviki among
the Social-Democrats declared themselves in favor of war and the only
party remaining firm in condemning all war was that of the Bolsheviki. The
entrance of the Turks into the war was almost considered a godsend by
the Constitutional Democrats, Octoberists, and Conservatives in the Duma
because it cleared the way for a final settlement of the Balkan problem
and promised the elimination of Turkey from Europe. Long after Sazonov was
removed, when the consent of England and France to give Russia free hand in
Constantinople and the Straits was read in a telegram before the Duma, a
general outburst of enthusiasm took place, the members demanding to
know why Sazonov, who was justly credited with this achievement, was in
retirement and not in charge of the foreign office which he should have
held by right. Miliukov's speeches and writings on the future settlement
of the Balkan problem were jokingly spoken of as his dissertation for the
degree of foreign secretary. At home the party was pursuing a policy of
patient endurance, postponing strife for the future until the crimes of the
tsar's government made further silence impossible. At that time the whole
tissue of treason was not yet known, but enough was in evidence to demand
vigorous protest. Not being a revolutionary party the Constitutional
Democrats abstained from any action not strictly within the law and merely
condemned the activity of the Government. They desired amelioration of the
fundamental laws, but even that they would have preferred to accomplish by
persuasion rather than by force. In fact they considered socialist demands
unreasonable, socialization of Russia premature, and any violent overthrow
unwise and hazardous. For the latter opinion they found support in the
failure of the uprising of the working class in 1905-06, when the punitive
expeditions proved the loyalty of the army to the throne. Consequently the
attitude of the army in the memorable days of the March revolution was a
great surprise to them. At the same time they attributed to themselves the
lion share in the overthrow, presumably on the ground that masses follow
leaders and the Constitutional \ Democrats were the only ones who had a
chance for open protest in the Duma and made use of it. This delusion led
to a series of tactical errors and cost them dearly. In all elections they
polled a comparatively small vote. Trying to save Russia for the Allies
they failed to meet the Russian Socialists on their own ground and were
forced to explain away differences of opinion much too thoroughgoing to be
explained away. In a country which is in the throes of the most remarkable
revolution ever witnessed, they tried to apply non-revolutionary
methods and drew on themselves the suspicion of the masses of being
counter-revolutionists. From the very moment when Miliukov announced the
passing of the supreme power from the Tsar to Grand Duke Michail, when his
words were answered by angry shouts in favor of a democratic republic, the
position of the party became precarious. They had either to revise their
own program and to catch up with the rush of the progressive current, or
else to find themselves in the ro1e of inundated rocks over which the
waters flow. The announcement that the party would support a demand for a
republic was too late to change the first impression, while the proposition
to accept unconditional expropriation of land in place of the compensation
plan was defeated in heated debate at the party convention. Under normal
circumstances the party would have probably been steadily losing support,
but the arrest and imprisonment of the best and highly honored leaders by
the Bolsheviki is bound to put fresh vigor into their efforts and give new
life to their cause.

The leaders of the Bolsheviki themselves have fallen into error of a
different kind. Being primarily a party of the wage earning day laborers,
the program of the Bolsheviki puts the interest of the proletariat above
everything else. From insufficient observation of peasant life and the fact
that peasants want socialization of land, they jump to the conclusion that
the country is ready for complete socialization. Only the more educated
leaders among them realize that such a conclusion is premature. But to
bring about the necessary change in as near a future as possible, the
leaders of the Bolsheviki have fanned hatred of the proletariat toward the
"bourgeois" classes. One must give them credit in this respect. They know
the value of simple language when they put this hatred into words. Listen
to the Russian Marseillaise: "Rise, brothers, all at once against the
thieves, the curs--the rich ones! Against the vampire Tsar! Beat them,
kill them--the cursed evil-doers! Glow, dawn of better life!" The simple
ideology, the easy catch phrases in which the language of this ideology is
couched, the primeval character of the passion aroused, contribute to the
success which the party enjoys among working people and homeless paupers.
Therein lies the power of the Bolsheviki. But reaction is bound to come
and here again the peasants will play the chief role. All accounts of
conversations with peasants tend to show that they have very vague ideas
of socialism. In fact the Social-Democrats have not taken the trouble to
acquaint the peasants with the principles of their teaching, leaving that
field almost entirely to the influence of socialist-revolutionists.

Among the intellectuals none have come nearer to the understanding of
peasant psychology than those men and women who from the first espoused
the cause of the peasant. Realizing the space separating educated men from
their less fortunate brothers, they gave up their life as intellectuals
and "went among the people." They donned peasant garb and acquired
peasant tongue. From this group of workers for freedom later the
Socialist-revolutionary party developed. "All land for the peasant" is
their slogan, while their promise to expropriate all land without any
compensation naturally meets with approval on the part of the land-hungry
peasants. Moreover, their program does not demand immediate complete
socialization of Russia, leaving that to a gradual process of evolution
and change of existing conditions. In the ten years preceding the first
revolution thousands of young intellectuals joined the party and fought the
tsar's regime. They showed a degree of self-abnegation found only in people
whose heart is kindled with the true spirit of devotion to a great cause.
The revolution of 1905 would never have taken place but for their organized
"terror from below." The high regard held for them by the widest circles
has caused their rise in power during the first two months of the
revolution of 1917. But tactical errors committed by the leaders of the
party as well as dissensions within the party itself contributed to a
rather rapid change of sentiment toward them on all sides. In a measure as
the Constitutional Democrats vigorously objected to their policy to put
into life as soon as possible the agrarian reforms promised by them, the
Social-Democrats on their part attacked them for their moderation in other
demands. For some reason not yet clear, Kerensky was slighted in the very
beginning of his political career when his nomination to the executive
council of the Socialist-revolutionist party was opposed by a large
majority. Just as the Constitutional Democrats made a series of tactical
errors due to the fact that they thought themselves representative of the
spirit of the Russian people, whereas in reality they stood sponsors only
for a relatively small minority, even so the Socialist-revolutionists
misjudged the attitude of other parties toward themselves. They overrated
the ability of the masses to distinguish between their attitude toward war
in general and the necessity to continue the present war. They overrated
the ability of the soldiers to distinguish between slavish obedience and
military discipline. They tried to play the role of a center. They tried to
mediate between Social-Democrats and Constitutional Democrats and naturally
failed in this attempt. Some of their leaders, notably Mr. Tschernov, were
accused by Constitutional Democrats of being pro-German if not actual
German agents. Others, including Kerensky himself and even Mme.
Breshkovsky, were accused by the Bolsheviki of having been almost bribed by
the capitalistic interests of America, England, and France. Needless to say
that the accusations had no basis whatever in actual facts and represent
simply an ugly outgrowth of misguided jealousy of the masses to guard their
dearly won right to a social revolution against those whom they consider
the worst enemies of socialism, and the desire of unscrupulous leaders to
profit by it. Thus the Socialist-revolutionists were gradually relegated in
the mind of the extremists to the great body of the hated "bourgeois." Only
in their rightful element, among the peasants, they continue to enjoy a
great deal of popularity, and the returns to the Constituent Assembly show
that theirs will be the absolute majority even though they lost some of
their popularity.

The progress of the Russian Revolution presents a sad spectacle of an
almost complete failure on the part of the majority of intellectuals to
understand the spirit of the times and to guide the masses through the
labyrinth of errors. In days past the Russian intellectuals were the
forefighters for freedom and the Russian people will ever be indebted to
them for this. They prepared the soil for the revolution by spreading ideas
of freedom by all means at their disposal. They weakened the tsar's power
and thus contributed to its overthrow by persistent attacks upon the
system of autocratic government. They helped to awaken the spirit of
self-consciousness in the masses. But they did not evolve new principles.
They did not open wide avenues for the development of a new order of social
organization. They misunderstood the masses and consequently were unable to
control the forces set loose. And if Russia is going to be saved from utter
ruin amidst the clamor and strife of party leaders and to evolve a new
democratic system, it will be due not to the intellectuals, but to the
great spirit of the dark masses of the Russian peasants.





FORCES BEHIND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION FORCES BEHIND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

BY SAMUEL N. HARPER

One was struck by the remarkable unity that characterized the short first
period of the Russian Revolution of last March. One knew, however, that
there were two distinct sets of forces behind the movement, operating
through two kinds of organizations. There were first the already existing
and parliamentary institutions which had become revolutionary in spirit and
methods of action. On the other hand there were the institutions produced
by the revolution itself, emerging from the chaos in the midst of which the
other, already functioning bodies, were trying to take a new and directing
line. The most prominent of the first type of institution was the Duma,
the legislative parliament of the old regime, and of the second type, the
Petrograd Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies.

The Duma, however, was only one of several legal institutions that had
developed under the old regime, and represented the first stages of
parliamentary, popular government. There were the local provincial and
municipal councils, and also the officially recognized war-industry
committees, which had come to have semi-governmental functions. Finally one
could bring under this category, with a little forcing, the cooperative
societies, which had assumed enormous importance during the two and a half
years of war.

In these institutions we had self-government, and participation in public
affairs, and also the idea of cooperation between the various classes and
political tendencies--the idea of coalition. The election law of the Duma
provided for the representation of all group interests of the community,
and representation by an actual member of the group, by a _bona fide_
peasant in the case of the peasantry. The seats in the assembly were
distributed specifically to landlords, manufacturers, the smaller
bourgeoisie, workmen, and peasants. The election law of the local
government bodies made similar provision for group representation. On the
war-industry committees, the workmen had elected representatives,
sitting with the representatives of the manufacturers and owners. In the
cooeperative movement the bourgeois-intellectual element had taken the
initiative, but had always emphasized the direct participation of the
workmen and peasants in the actual management of the societies, as the
theory of the movement demanded.

Thus the broader democratic classes of the country, the workmen and
peasants, were represented in the somewhat popular institutions that had
developed under the old regime. But the actual control was in the hands of
the less democratic elements--the landlords, the manufacturers, men of the
liberal professions, and of the so-called Intelligentsia class. Most
of these men were of liberal and democratic tendencies, but they were
in actual fact, as compared with the broader masses, of the privileged
classes. They had emphasized always the essentially democratic character of
the activity of the institutions in which they were the leaders. They put
particular stress on the fact that the activities of the local provincial
councils, for example, were directed mainly toward the amelioration of
conditions of life among the peasantry. But the fact that the control over
these institutions, even in the cooperative movement (so far as independent
control was allowed by the bureaucracy of the old regime), was secured to
the less democratic elements of the community, did contradict the idea of
coalition, of the bringing together of all interests and forces. These
institutions had been permitted to exist and develop only because they
were controlled by the more conservative groups. The cooperative societies
represented more truly the idea of coalition. Here in the cooperative
movement the leaders of political liberalism had always noted with relief
that one was gradually attaining the end toward which they knew they must
work--the organic union between the so-called Intelligentsia, and the
"people," meaning the broader, democratic classes.

When the anarchy resulting from the incompetence, stupidity and perhaps
treason of the old bureaucracy reached such an acute stage in the first
weeks of March that the leaders of the Russian public saw that some action
must be taken by some one, it was the Duma that assumed the initiative,
acting in a revolutionary manner, through an executive committee. The
municipal and provincial councils, organized in unions for war-work, and
the war-industry committees, turned without delay to the revolutionary
parliament, in which many of their leading workers were members. The
leaders of the cooeperative movement could not act with such rapidity and
precision. They had not been permitted to organize a central committee,
to coordinate the work of the thousands of small and scattered societies.
These first leaders of the revolution felt justified in taking the
initiative because they alone were organized. Also they thought they could
speak in the name of all classes, including the most democratic, because
the institutions through which they acted did include representatives of
all classes. To emphasize its special anxiety that the more democratic
groups feel their direct participation in the movement of which it had
taken the leadership, the Executive Committee of the Duma not only accepted
but encouraged the development of the revolutionary institutions of the
second category, of which the first to emerge was the Petrograd Council of
Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies.

This Council was organized during the very first days of the revolution;
it was in fact the resurrection of a revolutionary body of the 1905
revolution. The Duma invited the Council to share its own convenient
quarters. Perhaps the invitation was an afterthought, for the workmen and
soldiers of Petrograd in revolt had gravitated toward the Duma, had calmly
entered and taken possession of the large corridors of the palace. The
Council was a strictly revolutionary, and a very democratic body, composed
of directly elected delegates from the factories and garrison regiments of
Petrograd. It immediately became the organizing center for what came to be
called the "revolutionary democracy," as opposed to the "bourgeoisie."

The Executive Committee of the Duma consulted with the Council of Workmen's
and Soldiers' Deputies on the composition of the proposed Provisional
Government, and on the political program to be announced. For as we saw,
it was the first thought of these leaders to secure unity of action.
They recognized that the Council did in fact represent "revolutionary
democracy," at least of Petrograd. As the workmen and soldiers of Petrograd
were completely out of hand, armed and fighting on the streets, arresting
officers, ministers and police, and showing a tendency to start general and
anarchic pillaging, the Duma leaders saw a restraining authority in the
Council of these same workmen and soldiers. They therefore either did not
wish, or did not dare, to object at the time to the famous order No. 1 to
the garrison of Petrograd, issued by the Council, and not by the Executive
Committee of the Duma. Many have claimed that this particular order, which
was extended to the front, was responsible for the later demoralization of
the whole Russian army. Others, the leaders of revolutionary democracy,
have insisted that this order prevented the immediate and complete collapse
of the whole army.

In preparing the slate for the new government, the Executive Committee of
the Duma selected one of the presiding officers of the Council, Kerensky.
When Miliukov, the Duma leader, announced the composition of the new
provisional government to the crowd, composed largely of workmen and
soldiers gathered in the main corridors of the Duma, he emphasized the
cooperation between Duma and Council, the consent of Kerensky to enter
the government, and also the fact that most of the members of the new
government had worked in and through institutions, in which peasants and
workmen also had been represented.

Though the word "coalition" was not used during the first weeks of the
revolution, one had constantly in mind the idea of "bringing together all
the vital forces of the country." In this last expression I quote one of
the first and most emphasized slogans of the revolution. But the problem
proved most difficult, complicated by the fact that one had to solve at one
and the same time two most stupendous tasks. One had to consolidate the
conquests of the revolution, and also prosecute the war. The prosecution
of the war required the acceptance of a strong authority, vested in the
Provisional Government. But naturally the first aim of the revolution was
to extend its ideas to the rest of the country, for the actual overthrow of
the old order had been largely the work of Petrograd. The two tasks were
closely associated with one another, because one could not reorganize the
country for the war until the new ideas had taken root.

The first parliamentary leaders wished to use as the basis for carrying out
both tasks the old institutions, the municipal and provincial councils,
and the cooeperative societies, at the same time taking steps gradually
to democratize them. But the strictly revolutionary leaders wished to
democratize immediately, and put this forward as the first object to be
accomplished. So they demanded and promoted the organizing of revolutionary
democracy all over the country, through councils of workmen, soldiers, and
peasants, through army committees, land committees, professional unions,
and so forth. The champions of this immediate democratization policy were
almost exclusively members of the various socialist parties, some of
them representing the most extreme views. The majority of them were
not consciously striving to undermine the authority of the Provisional
Government. They recognized and in fact advocated the compromise
represented in the first group of leaders. They trusted most of them,
but wished at the same time to organize revolutionary democracy, for
self-protection for the moment, and perhaps for self-assertion at a
later date. But a minority of the socialist leaders did not take this
constructive line. From the very start they professed to distrust the
first Provisional Government, for they did not believe in "coalition"--the
co-operation between the various group interests of the community. Their
theory was that of class struggle; they proclaimed this to be their aim,
and worked to give to the revolution this character. Though a minority,
they were a very active and energetic group, and tended to give the tone in
the meetings and resolutions of revolutionary democracy, thus dulling
the spirit of cooperation, which characterized the first period of the
revolution.

The extremists wished a social revolution, "permanent revolution," class
struggle, and they agitated openly and with energy. The workmen and
soldiers of Petrograd had borne the brunt of the physical side of the
revolution. Only workmen and soldiers had been killed fighting for the
revolution during that first week. These particular groups were therefore
proclaimed the "pride and flower of the revolution," and told that they
must establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, thus consolidating the
conquests of the revolution, which should not be allowed to remain a mere
bourgeois affair.

The moderate, constructive socialists did not accept this extreme view,
but they nevertheless recognized the need for an effective organization of
revolutionary democracy all over the country, to ensure the adoption of
truly democratic policies. So they also set about to strengthen and
extend the councils and committees that had emerged with the revolution,
coordinating them in conferences and formal congresses. Much of the
activity along these lines was in fact of a constructive character. But
class and party considerations were always in the foreground at all these
congresses. Also the constructive socialists did not accept the idea of
a formal coalition at the beginning. They did not participate as
organizations in the first government. Kerensky was a socialist, but he
entered the first government as a member of the Duma, and not as the
representative of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies.

The resolution of a conference of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers'
Deputies, called during the fourth week of the revolution, summarizes the
attitude of revolutionary democracy toward the problem of the moment. The
full text of the resolution, given in a literal translation to preserve as
far as possible the style of the original, is an interesting document:

"Whereas the Provisional Government, that was brought into power by the
overthrow of the autocracy, represents the interests of the liberal and
democratic bourgeoisie, but shows a tendency to follow the right line, in
the declaration published by it in agreement with the representatives of
the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies, therefore the all-Russian
Conference of Councils of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies, while insisting
on the need of constant pressure being brought to bear on the Provisional
Government to arouse it to the most energetic struggle with the
counter-revolutionary forces, and to decisive measures in the direction
of an immediate democratization of the entire Russian life, nevertheless
recognizes that political expediency dictates support of the Provisional
Government by the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies _so long_ as
the Provisional Government, in agreement with the Council, moves inflexibly
toward the consolidation of the conquests of the revolution and the
extension of these conquests."

The expression "so long as," emphasized in the translation of the
resolution, has been one of the most far-reaching of the formulae produced
by the revolution. Around this phrase has centered the struggle of these
last months. The extremists decided from the very start that the condition
had not been fulfilled. The more moderate socialists took an attitude of
constant watchfulness, and latent distrust.

"Revolutionary Democracy" could not be organized in a week or a month, so
for the first period it was represented by the revolutionary democracy
of Petrograd, through the Petrograd Council of Workmen's and Soldiers'
Deputies, supplemented by delegates from similar councils of other cities,
and by representatives from the army at the front. It was more difficult to
organize the peasants scattered through the country, and not concentrated
in barracks or factories. The workmen and soldiers of Petrograd therefore
assumed to represent all revolutionary democracy, and they had the physical
force behind them. They were there on the spot, at the administrative and
political center inherited from the old regime, ready to act without delay
when they decided that the Provisional Government should no longer be
supported. And the workmen and soldiers of Petrograd were being won over
gradually to the extremists, the Bolsheviki.

As the Provisional Government was aiming first of all to preserve social
peace, adopting a policy of conciliation, it did not oppose the supervision
exercised by the Council. In fact it realized that only recognition of such
supervision would ensure any measure of common action. The Duma committee
had been asked to efface itself, for as an institution of the old regime it
aroused the suspicions of the revolutionary bodies. The efficiency of
the local government bodies was sacrificed to the idea of immediate
democratization. The establishment of revolutionary committees all over
the country, and in the army even, was countenanced and accepted, though
perhaps only because it was seen that it could not be prevented except by
repressive measures, to which the first leaders were unwilling to resort.
Perhaps also the latter realized that physical force was not on their side.

The Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies acted on the principle of
a direct mandate from the whole people. It issued orders to revolutionary
democracy, as we saw. It insisted on the exercise of a real control,
even on the right to countersign, as it were, some of the orders of the
Provisional Government. Then it definitely questioned the policy and
measures of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of War. When
these two men were forced to resign, the other members of the government
demanded that revolutionary democracy share in the responsibility of
government, if it insisted on such a measure of control. The Councils
at first refused, but later agreed, and a frankly and officially recognized
coalition government was formed. Socialists entered the government not
only as members of their respective parties, but as representatives of
revolutionary democracy organized in the Councils, which now contained
delegates from the peasantry, hurriedly brought in by a somewhat artificial
system of representation.

The first Coalition Government drew up a program of policy. As this program
was somewhat vaguely worded, coalition in the strict and true sense of
the word was not secured. The socialists had entered the coalition under
pressure, as we saw. Some of them felt called upon to justify the step in
a statement, later discovered and made public, to socialists of other
countries. In the statement they explained that they had entered the
government, in order to "deepen and extend the class struggle." And this is
what some of them did actually start in to do, using their authority and
powers as ministers to turn the organs of revolutionary democracy in this
direction, promoting suspicion of and antagonism toward the bourgeoisie.
The socialist ministers also held themselves directly responsible to the
Councils. Finally the socialist members of the government tried to force
immediate decisions on questions of a fundamental nature, which should be
decided only by the Constituent Assembly, thus not adhering to the
program drawn up as the basis for the coalition. The position of the
non-socialist members of the government therefore became untenable, and a
whole group of them resigned.

The resignation of the most influential bourgeois group of the first
Coalition Government coincided quite accidentally with an armed uprising
which the extremists, the Bolsheviki, had been planning for several weeks.
For the extremists were again putting forward their demand, this time
supported by armed force, that all the "capitalist" ministers resign, and
that all authority pass into the hands of the Councils. But the Councils
refused to take over authority, the constructive majority replying that
they would not accept the responsibility. In their judgment only a
government representing all the vital forces of the country, that is a
coalition government, could succeed. The moderate socialists prevailed
in the Councils, and a second coalition was formed, this time under the
presidency of a socialist, Kerensky. Some weeks elapsed before the new
government was finally organized. The non-socialist groups were willing to
enter a coalition government led by a socialist, but only on a definite
program, which would exclude all fundamental legislation. Objection was
raised also to certain individual socialists, whose record in the first
coalition government made one doubt their willingness to adhere honestly
to any coalition program. This objection was withdrawn later; but the
non-socialists gave only their second-best men as members of the new
government. The non-socialists also had demanded that the Provisional
Government be absolutely independent, its members not responsible to any
councils or party committees. For the Councils of Workmen's and Soldiers'
Deputies were as we saw exclusively socialistic, and had become mere party
bodies.

In the meantime the democratization of local government bodies was going on
apace, and very successfully in view of the chaotic conditions produced by
revolution and war. As the new local municipal and provincial councils,
elected by universal suffrage, began to convene, the revolutionary
committees and councils were expected gradually to disappear. The elections
for the Constituent Assembly were to take place as soon as the new local
governing bodies could verify and correct the lists of voters. The
Constituent Assembly was to replace definitely not only all revolutionary
councils and committees, but also the Duma, which continued to exist
legally, though without functioning. The main objective of the constructive
elements was to hold the situation together until the Constituent Assembly
could be convened; the date had been advanced, even at a sacrifice of
regularity in election procedure. And a coalition government seemed to be
the only possible solution, despite the difficulties already encountered in
applying the principle.

The councils, the land committees and the other organizations that had come
into existence with and in the course of the revolution were, as we saw,
almost exclusively socialist in their political affiliations. This was true
even of the peasant congresses, though it was generally admitted that
the bulk of the peasantry was not consciously socialistic. Of all
the revolutionary bodies the peasant councils were clearly the least
representative. This was particularly true of the first alleged all-Russian
Peasant Congress. The peasantry, the great mass of the population, became
articulate very slowly. The non-socialist groups were striving to bring
about a more true expression of peasant views; and their moderate program
was making headway, though they found it difficult to compete with the
extremists, who made most generous promises. But the non-socialist groups
were beginning to take a stronger line, as they saw the experiments of the
extremists lead to disillusionment. They proposed to organize councils and
congresses of the non-socialist elements. This project was immediately
branded as counter-revolutionary by "revolutionary democracy." Perhaps to
ward off the contemplated move of the non-socialists, Kerensky issued a
general invitation for a state conference at Moscow of all parties, groups,
and organizations, at which the opinions of all could be expressed,
presumably for the guidance of the Coalition Government.

The Moscow Conference did in fact give to all organizations, Duma, Councils
of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies, the recently elected local-government
bodies, cooeperative and professional unions, in fact every group, socialist
and non-socialist, revolutionary and pre-revolutionary institutions, the
opportunity to express views. The speeches did perhaps help the Coalition
Government to sense the situation with which it had to deal, though the
Conference showed that the Coalition Government was unstable, and that
the extreme ideas of the Bolsheviki had penetrated deeply in the broader
masses. Again the Bolsheviki attacked the principle of coalition, and
demanded that revolutionary democracy take over all authority.

Then came the Kornilov affair, which in its conception was an effort on
the part of the constructive groups, including the moderate socialists, to
discredit the extremists, and establish a stronger government, free from
party ties and party programs, representing a national movement to organize
"all the vital forces of the country," to use again the phraseology of
the revolution. But there was a misunderstanding, and also perhaps it was
premature--"revolutionary democracy" was not yet sufficiently sobered
to accept a program of common constructive effort. The movement had the
opposite effect; it split the country into two openly hostile camps, and
brought revolutionary democracy still more under the influence of the
extremists. The Coalition Government fell to pieces, and a Directorate of
Five, with almost dictatorial powers, still headed by Kerensky, assumed
authority.

The Bolsheviki now demanded the absolute and final renunciation of
the principle of coalition, and the formation of a purely socialistic
government. Kerensky and the constructive socialists refused to participate
in such a government, and opened negotiations with the non-socialist
leaders, to attempt once more the coalition form of government. The
extremists then sent out a call to "revolutionary democracy" to meet in
another conference, which they called a Democratic Conference, as opposed
to the State Conference of Moscow. They declared that no bourgeois,
counter-revolutionary group would be admitted to the conference. Kerensky
allowed the conference to meet. It passed contradictory resolutions, first
voting against the principle of a coalition form of government, but later
seeming to advocate and support this principle. The moderate socialists
fought hard for the coalition idea, and Kerensky and his followers seemed
at last to have won out. In any case, at the beginning of October, Kerensky
formed a third coalition government, and convened a preliminary parliament
in which all parties were represented. This time a definitely outlined
program, as the basis for cooeperation, was accepted by the socialists,
which made it possible for the non-socialists to give their best men to
the new combination. The Provisional Government of October 8, at least
the fifth since the revolution, and the third Coalition Government,
unquestionably brought together the strongest and most representative group
of men since the revolution. The Bolsheviki declared their intention to
break it up as quickly as possible, and there was not much optimism in
non-socialist circles; one felt that it would not survive many weeks. But
this third Coalition Government gave a greater promise of success than
any previous attempt. There was hope that it would last, and hold the
situation together, at least until the Constituent Assembly could meet.

This hope was not realized, as we know, and the break-up of the government
came within a month, when the Bolsheviki at last accomplished their
long-planned armed uprising, and by force established what they called the
dictatorship of the proletariat. Acting on the very eve of the opening of
the Constituent Assembly, the elections for which were already in progress,
the Bolsheviki showed clearly their contempt for a really national, popular
form of government. The Bolshevik uprising was followed by civil war. But
this was the aim of the extremists, for they were against social peace,
cooperation, coalition, and were striving for class war.

Until this last month the Russian Revolution, though marked by extreme
antagonisms, and much wrangling, was nevertheless comparatively peaceful in
character. There was no extensive violence, such as would justify the use
of the term "civil war." It was to avoid civil war that such constant, and
on the whole honest, efforts were made to "unite all the vital forces
of the country." For it was seen that civil war would perhaps ruin the
revolution, and in any case would eliminate Russia as a factor in the war,
and the constructive leaders constantly emphasized that on the successful
outcome of the war depended also the success of the revolution. But the
efforts of the more constructive and moderate groups failed. This
very short outline of the attempts to solve the problems with which
revolutionary Russia was confronted by applying the principle of coalition
gives an interpretation of the recent events in Russia from another angle.
In any case one has tried to point out the forces in conflict during these
last months, perhaps suggesting one of many possible issues from the
present chaos.





THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

BY FRANK ALFRED GOLDER

The intelligent public that has been watching the erratic courses which the
Russian ship of state has been sailing during the last few years suspected
that something was wrong with it, but not until after the March revolution
did it become fully known what incompetent and irresponsible officers were
in command. It was then learned that a great part of the time the Emperor
was either drunk or doped, that the Empress was hysterical and on the verge
of a mental breakdown, and that they were assisted by senile Sturmer,
mentally unbalanced Protopopov, and profligate Rasputin, none of whom could
read a compass nor lay out a course and steered the ship as they willed.
All the passengers, first, second, and third class, grand dukes,
intelligentsia, and laborers saw the danger and shouted warning but the
officers neither saw nor heard. In order to save themselves and the vessel
each class of passengers, quite independent of the other, resolved that at
the first opportune moment it would throw the officers overboard and
take charge of the ship; but while they were plotting the crew mutinied,
arrested the officers, and left the ship to drift in sight of the breakers.

Nicholas Romanov is to blame for the plight of his country and for his own
misfortunes. He was warned, he was given his chances, but he abused them
all. When he entered on his reign he was popular and had the good will of
his people with him. For some reason or other it was assumed that he was
liberal minded and that under him the people would breathe a little more
freely than under his autocratic father. This hope was so strong that it
was unconsciously accepted as a fact. Stories were told that the Tsar
fraternized with students and workmen and that he was determined to destroy
the bureaucratic wall which kept the people from him. It was on the
strength of this report that the Zemstvo of Tver petitioned him that in the
future it might have direct access to him and have a say in the government.
Here was a great opportunity but he turned it against himself. His reply
was, "It has come to my attention that recently some people have been
carried away by senseless dreams that the representatives of the zemstvos
should take part in internal affairs. Let it be known to all that I shall
guard the autocracy as firmly as did my father." This was his program and
it deeply disappointed the people. On the top of this came the tragedy at
Moscow on the day of his coronation when hundreds of people lost their
lives in the attempt to obtain a loving cup which was promised them in
commemoration of the event. Then followed the wholesale killing of the
factory hands at Iaroslav, of the peasants in Kharkov, the miners on the
Lena, and other such massacres and pogroms. Nicholas himself withdrew to
his palaces and left the affairs of state in the hands of the court clique
which dragged Russia into the Japanese war and brought on the revolution of
1905. Before it was over the Emperor promised a constitution but as soon as
the disturbance was quelled he went back on his word.

It was known that he was weak and he now proved that he was also a liar.
He dismissed one Duma after another, he created an upper house to act as a
brake, he juggled with the electoral laws so that whereas according to the
law of December 24, 1905 the working classes and the peasants were entitled
to 68 per cent of the Duma's representation, by the law of June 14, 1907
they were allowed only 36 per cent, Poland's delegation was cut down from
37 to 12 per cent, Caucasus' from 29 to 9, Siberia's from 21 to 14, and
Central Asia's from 23 to 1. In fact he did everything to make the Duma
ineffective and a laughing stock. But that was not enough, his pride was
hurt and he wanted to be revenged, and the number of people arrested,
imprisoned, exiled, and executed for political crimes was greater than
before.

It has been said that Nicholas was not cruel and the blame for the bloody
deeds in his reign was laid to his ministers. Indeed, there is something in
his face that is kindly and makes a very good first impression. But those
who knew him better had learned to distrust that smile. When the Emperor
was most gracious to one of his ministers it was a sign that his
resignation would be called for the next day. In this respect Nicholas
II was like Alexander I. The following story tells something of the real
character of the man who had the lives of millions of people at his mercy.
The committee appointed by the Duma to take charge of the papers of the
Tsar found that many important documents of state, such as reports from the
commanders-in-chief, ministers, and others, he had never read, and some he
had not even looked at. They did, however, come across a notebook which had
been carefully kept and guarded. On opening it they noted that Nicholas,
with his own hand, wrote down the names of those revolutionists who, in
1905-06, were executed, the kind of execution, and other such details.
[Footnote: This story was told to the writer by a member of the committee.]
That interested him, but matters of state he left to his time servers,
to his hysterical wife, yes, to Grigory Rasputin, a dirty, ignorant, and
licentious peasant, until the country blushed with shame and it became a
saying, "Now we have Grigory I [Rasputin] as tsar."

The present war was declared by the Tsar but the people approved it because
they hoped that the defeat of Germany would mean the defeat of the German
reactionary influence in Russia, especially about the court, and a closer
union with democratic England and France. I was present at the capital at
the time that the war broke out and heard the cheers when the Emperor made
the declaration. It seemed as if Nicholas by coming out against Germany had
redeemed himself in the eyes of his people who were willing to wipe out the
past, and give him another chance. During the first months of the war he
was as popular as during the first weeks of his reign. It was not like the
Japanese war when the soldiers refused service; in this German war, the
men called to colors went without a murmur, they hoped that something good
would come out of it. Offers of help from individuals as well as commercial
and civic bodies poured in on the Government. The ministers said that
everything was ready, that in a few months the Russians would be in Berlin.
At first, all went well, but soon news came of the catastrophe in eastern
Prussia, of the traitorous acts of the Minister of War, of the campaign in
the Carpathians where the Russians were slaughtered like sheep because they
had no guns, no ammunition, and no supplies. Again the poor people were
betrayed and a cry of horror and vengeance went up as on January 9, 1905,
Bloody Sunday. The Tsar would probably have been overthrown there and then
had it not been for the war and the hatred of Germany. The liberals and
patriots of all kinds thought that all was not yet lost and they went to
work with a will, giving themselves, their money, their strength, and their
lives, but they soon became convinced that it was all in vain so long as
Rasputin, the Empress, and their clique ran the government.

[Footnote: Several months before the revolution the following confidential
conversation took place between Alexeiev, the Russian commander-in-chief,
and a journalist:

ALEXEIEV: I can get nothing from them [ministers]. My supplies are
decreasing.... It is even necessary to think. Through the Duma they begged
the Emperor to put in ministers whom the people could trust, but he, as if
to show his contempt for public opinion, selected men of low character,
one worse than the other, men with whom even decent monarchists would not
shake hands, and in shame withdrew from court.

[Footnote: about bread. We are already cutting down the allowance. They
have forgotten about food for the horses....

JOURNALIST : What are you going to do about it?

A. What shall I do? With these people there is nothing that can be done.

J. Have you said anything to the Tsar about it?

A. I have ... but it does no good.

J. Why?

A. While you talk to him he pays attention, gets worked up, is eager to do
something ... but as soon as he leaves you he forgets about it. All kinds
of pressure are brought to bear upon him, he is not a free man.

J. Is it true that the Tsarina has much influence?

A. It is only too true. Her influence is irresistible. What is worse she
never comes out in the open. She interferes with everybody, but works
behind their backs. You never can tell what she will do next. Every time
she comes here she makes new trouble.

J. Do the ministers ever consult you?

A. They come, they talk. What can they do? The honest ministers leave and
the worthless remain.... If it were not for the war I would resign too. If
I should leave what would not they do with the army? Do I not understand
that Sturmer and Company are thinking only of an alliance with Germany? ...
The home situation is serious. They [ministers] are purposely instigating
hunger disturbances in order to provoke a revolution so as to have an
excuse for breaking away from the Allies and end the war. Our army is now
in condition to crush Germany and without that there can be no real peace
in Europe. But a permanent peace is not wanted by Sturmer and Protopopov,
they wish to keep the people under the heel of a strong Germany. Apart from
the Germans no one will protect them from the revolution. The pity of it
all is that at the head of the government there still are men who are
interested in crushing the people.]

[Footnote: Princess Vasilchikov, a prominent court lady, became convinced
that the Empress and her ministers were ruining the country and therefore
wrote her a courteous letter, pleading with her to save Russia. For her
pains she received an order to retire to her estate, and her husband, who
held a very prominent position, left the capital with her. (_Novoe
Vremia_, March 11-24, 1917.)]

Members of the royal family and the grand dukes urged the Tsar to change
his course and not ruin the country and the dynasty but he, drugged by Dr.
Badmaev and duped by Rasputin, Protopopov and Company, sent them all out
of the capital with orders not to return until sent for. They became so
desperate that they murdered Rasputin but the Empress remained and the
government policy became more reactionary than ever and as Prince Iusupov
said the country was drifting to destruction or to a state of anarchy. It
was quite evident that the only way to save the country was through a
revolution and it was merely a question whether it would come first from
the top or from the bottom and when.

[Footnote: As late as October, 1916, the old Empress saw her son at Kiev
and pointed to him that Rasputin and the other members of the court circle
would overthrow the dynasty and destroy the country but it did no good.
Only a few days before the outbreak of the revolution his own brother,
Mikhail Alexandrovich, pleaded with him along the same lines and with the
same success. (_Rech_, March 7-20, 1917.)]

[Footnote: The old and scholarly Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich went to
see the Emperor about November 1, 1916, and in order to impress him with
the critical situation of the country he wrote out his ideas so as to leave
them. He was received in a kindly manner by the Tsar who listened to
the reading of the letter and then took it over so as to read it to the
Empress. When he came to the place where her name was mentioned she
snatched it from him and tore it up. In the course of the conversation that
followed the old Duke said some sharp things but he could not get anything
but smiles from the Tsar, and when the old man's cigarette went out the
Tsar lighted it for him. It was impossible to get an out and out talk,
or satisfaction of any kind, and Nicholas Mikhailovich left the court in
disgust. Two days later he was requested to retire to his estate for two
months. Here is the Grand Duke's letter:

"You have said more than once that you would carry on the war to a
successful finish. Do you believe that with the conditions as they exist at
present in the rear this can be done? Are you acquainted with the internal
situation, not only in the interior of the Empire but also on the outskirts
(Siberia, Turkestan, Caucasus)? Are you told all the truth or is some of
it concealed from you? Where is the root of the evil? Allow me to tell you
briefly the essentials of the case.

"So long as your method of selecting ministers was known to a limited
circle only affairs went on somehow, but from the moment your system became
generally known it is stupid to govern Russia in that way. Repeatedly you
have told me that you could trust no one, that you were being deceived.
If that is true then the same influences are at work on your wife, dearly
beloved by you, who is led astray by [--].

[Footnote: the evil circle that surrounds her. You trust Alexandra
Fedorovna--that is easy to understand. But that which comes out of her
mouth is the result of clever fabrication and not the truth. If you are
not strong enough to remove these influences from her, at least put
yourself on guard against this steady and systematic interference of those
who act through your beloved. If your persuasion is ineffective, and I am
certain that you have more than once fought against this influence, try
some other means so as to end with this system once for all. Your first
impulses and decisions are always unusually true and to the point, but as
soon as another influence comes in you begin to hesitate and end up by
doing something different from what you originally decided. If you should
succeed in removing this continuous invasion of the dark forces there
would take place at once the birth of a new Russia, and there would return
to you the confidence of the greater number of your subjects. All other
matters would soon settle themselves. You would find people who under
different conditions would be willing to work under your personal
leadership. At the proper time, and that is not far distant, you can of
your own free will organize a ministry which should be responsible to you
and to constitutional institutions. This can be done very simply, without
any force from outside as was the case with the act of October 17, 1905. I
hesitated a long time before venturing to tell you this truth, and I
finally consented when your mother and sister urged me to do so. You are
at the beginning of a new era of disturbances, I will go farther, at the
beginning of a new era of attempts at assassination. Believe me that in
trying to loosen you from the chains that bind you I do it from no motives
of personal interest and of this you and Her Majesty are convinced, but in
the hope and in the expectation of saving you, your throne, and our dear
native land from some very serious and irreparable consequences." (_Rech_,
March 9-22, 1917.)

[Footnote: "An important role was played at court by Dr. Badmaev,
Rasputin's friend. There were many rumors afloat in court and it is
difficult to tell the truth. But this I can say that Nicholas
Alexandrovich was drugged with different drugs from Thibet. In this
Rasputin took part. During the last days they brought the Emperor to a
state of almost total insanity and his will power was completely gone. In
all matters of state he consulted the Empress who led him to the edge of
the precipice." Interview given out by Prince Iusupov, in _Novoe Vremia_,
March 14-27, 1917.]

[Footnote: One of the editors of the _Novoe Vremia_ who has large
acquaintance in the aristocratic circles of the capital told the writer
that for months before the revolution it was commonly talked about in the
homes of military leaders and fashionable circles that for the good of
Russia the Empress must be killed. Last fall (1916) there came to his home
one of his friends, an aide-de-camp of one of the grand dukes, and
confided to him that he was meditating an act of terrorism in order to get
a certain person out of the way. Another topic of conversation was the
revolution after the war.]

[Footnote: "I will say this--at court there reigned a kind of nightmare,
each day fewer and fewer people remained there. If the revolution had not
broken out from the bottom it would have from the top." Interview given out
by Prince Iusupov, in _Novoe Vremia_, March 14-27, 1917.]

It is only since the political upheaval that the activities and plans of
the grand dukes have become public, but the cry for a revolution on
the part of the great mass of intelligent people was heard before and
everywhere. On my return to Russia, in February, 1916, after an absence of
a little more than two years, I noticed many changes but none greater than
in the public opinion in regard to the administration. On the way across
Siberia, I met with many Russians, some of whom were army officers, and one
and all bitterly criticized the government for its mismanagement of the
war, for the betrayal of Russia as they called it, for its incompetency,
and general worthlessness. At the capital, it was the same, everywhere,
street, car, and public places, the government was denounced; there was no
attempt at concealment. In the archives where I worked, which are almost
under the very nose of the imperial family, the criticism was as open as in
private homes. In fact there was no exception. When mention was made of
the Court, of Rasputin, and of the Empress, there was a kind of a painful
smile; it was not a subject that self-respecting patriotic Russians liked
to talk about in public or before strangers; it was like dirty linen that
ought not to be hung out for public view.

There was reason enough and suffering enough to justify the complaining.
Petrograd was overcrowded owing to the thousands of refugees who had
been driven there, rooms and apartments were difficult to find and very
expensive, and the cost of living had gone up so high that it was hard for
the poor to make ends meet. It was almost impossible to get about in the
city, as the war had reduced the number of cabs and the few that did
business asked such exorbitant fares that only the rich could afford to
ride in them. The street car situation was in a hopeless tangle. Even
before the war there were not enough accommodations for the public, but
since the opening of hostilities many of the cars had broken down and there
were no mechanics to repair them and no new cars to replace them. At
a time when the population increased, the transportation facilities
decreased. Passengers poured into the cars like a stream, filled the seats,
blocked the aisles, jammed the entrance, stood on the steps, hung on
behind, and clung to anything that might bear them along. Difficult as
it was to get into the car, it was worse to get out, and it is easier to
imagine than to describe the pushing, swearing, tearing, and fighting that
one witnessed. The railways were in an equally bad condition. One had to
wait weeks for a ticket. Men and women were crowded into the same coupes;
the cars were packed so full of human beings that they suggested cattle
cars, except that they were not so sanitary, for they contained people
suffering from contagious diseases and were without fresh air.

The food situation was very serious. For many years, Russia had been the
granary of Europe but during the winter of 1916-17 suffered from shortage
of food. Passengers told how in southern Russia grain and flour were
rotting and yet in northern Russia the inhabitants were starving owing to
the breakdown of the transportation system. It was pointed out that while
the railway officials refused to give cars for bringing in the necessities
of life, yet articles of luxury, expensive fruits, and such things did come
into the city--a state of affairs which meant, of course, that some one
was grafting. Sugar could be obtained only by cards and in very limited
quantities; flour could not be bought at all, and black, sour bread could
often be had only by standing in long lines and for hours at a time. There
were no shoes and people asked what became of the hides of the thousands of
animals that were annually slaughtered and shot. It was said that these,
like other things, were sold to Germany.

As usual the poorer classes suffered the most. The well-to-do sent their
servants who after a time returned with bread; at the worst it was only an
inconvenience, but the workman had no servants to run his errands. In
the morning, the laborer left his home for his work with little or no
breakfast, at noon there was no luncheon for him because his wife was
standing in the bread or sugar line, and when he returned in the evening
there may have been bread enough but little else. The wife was tired and
discouraged, the children crying and hungry, and life became a burden.

We may say that the conditions in Russia were no worse than in France or
Germany. This is doubtless true, but there is this difference: the people
of France and Germany had confidence in their leaders and realized that
they were doing the best that they could, while the Russians knew they
could put no trust in their Government, that the suffering was unnecessary
and was due to corruption, favoritism, and incompetency. The Russians have
as much patriotism and patience as any other people, but when they saw
themselves abused and imposed upon they had a right to complain.

In addition to the criticism of the Government the other favorite topic of
conversation was the revolution that would come after the war. This was
discussed as openly as the problems of war; the two were bound up together,
first a successful ending of the war, and then a change in government.

This public denunciation and open discussion of a _coup d'etat_ came as a
shock to me, for I remembered quite vividly how the same people cheered the
Emperor when he declared war. Three years ago no one would have dared to
talk like that. To be sure enough was said then of the desirability of a
more liberal government, but it was a far-off question, one that the
next generation might have to deal with. Now the talk was of an overturn
immediately after the war.

The court circle was not ignorant of what was being said for the spies kept
them fully informed. In conversation with a journalist two months before
the outbreak of the revolution, the Minister of the Interior, Protopopov, a
protege of Rasputin, said that he was aware of the revolutionary propaganda
and that he was ready to face any attempt that might be made to overthrow
the government.

"I will not stop at anything," he remarked, ... "the first thing that I
shall do is to send them [revolutionaries] from the capital by the car
loads. But I will strangle the revolution no matter what the cost may be."
[Footnote: _Novoe Vremia_, March 19-April 1, 1917.] He had no doubt that he
could handle the situation and he inspired those about him with the same
confidence, particularly the Emperor whom he assured that the discontent
was confined chiefly to the intelligentsia and to a small number of the
gentry, and that the common people and the army were devoted to the
autocracy.

To the question that arises why the revolution, which was expected after
the war, came off before its conclusion, the answer is that the present
revolution was not planned nor desired by any one of importance; it came as
a surprise to all. It just happened. If some one must have the credit
or blame, it is Protopopov who was at the time suspected of being queer
mentally and who has since lost his reason entirely. He was so sure of
himself and of his ability to put down the uprising and thereby show
himself a real statesman that he concluded not to wait for the revolution
to come in the ordinary course of events, but to hurry it a bit. Although
there is no conclusive proof for this statement, there is plenty of
convincing circumstantial evidence. We know that it was proposed to have
the workmen of Petrograd strike on February 27, the day of the opening of
the Duma, as a protest against the government; we know also that to meet
this situation, the Minister of the Interior had placed machine guns in the
garrets, in steeples, on housetops, and other such places where they could
command the important streets and shoot down the mob. The rising did not
take place because Miliukov, the great liberal leader, learned that the
Government was behind this move and that preparations had been made to
slaughter the unsuspecting workmen. He, therefore, addressed them in an
open letter calling on them not to make any demonstration, and they did
not. For the time being the strike was off, but the air was full of
discontent and restlessness, and it was difficult to say when trouble would
break out again. With this in view, a number of representatives of various
organizations met to discuss the situation and to determine what attitude
they should take and what counsel they should give to the labor leaders.
Miliukov and a few others urged that all uprisings should be discouraged
because they would interfere with the war, would cost the lives of many
innocent persons, and would accomplish nothing. There were, however,
others, especially Anisimov, who argued strongly in favor of a strike,
saying that this was the opportune time to overthrow the present regime
and to establish a democratic government.[Footnote: I have this story from
Miliukov.] When the revolution came off and the papers of the secret police
were seized, it was discovered that Anisimov, who urged the revolt, was
the paid agent of the Government and was doubtless doing its bidding. This
shows that the Government instigated and abetted the uprising. But this
is not all the evidence. Between February 27 and the outbreak of the
revolution men impersonating Miliukov went to the factories, calling on the
workmen to rise against the Government.[Footnote: I have this story from
Miliukov.] There is still another bit of evidence. In order to give the
laboring classes cause for revolt, the food supply in the factory districts
was reduced and many people suffered from hunger and in their desperation
came out into the streets. During the revolutionary week little, if any,
food came in, but immediately after it the soldiers found 250,000 "puds" of
flour, [Footnote: _Russkaia Svoboda_, 1917. No. 3, p. 24.] enough to last
Petrograd ten days, meat, besides other food hidden in police stations and
elsewhere out of reach of the public. It has been said that the Government
instigated the uprising in order to bring about a separate peace with
Germany. No direct proof has as yet been produced to substantiate this
charge, and the only testimony that I have bearing on this case is the
statement made by commander-in-chief Alexeiev in a confidential interview
with a journalist already quoted. [Footnote: There is not the least bit of
evidence to show that the Emperor himself was mixed up in these intrigues.
Among the papers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs there is but one
document that throws any light on the question of a separate peace during
the time of the monarchy. It is a letter from the minister of the German
Court to the minister of the Russian Court insinuating a separate peace.
This letter was shown, as was intended, to the Tsar, who read it, put it
aside, and did not answer it. This, however, does not mean that Sturmer,
Protopopov and the clique of the Empress were not planning to bring about a
situation which would compel a separate peace.]

These four points--the encouragement of a revolt by the secret agents,
the impersonation of Miliukov, the concealment of food in the factory
districts, the desire of a separate peace with Germany--make out a fairly
good case to show that the Government was behind the disturbance. Aside
from the reason already given for the desire of a separate peace, the
other reason for the action of the ministry was this: It feared that the
revolutionary movement, if permitted to take its natural course, would
develop such strength that it could not be put down when it broke out, and,
therefore, the Minister of the Interior decided to take it in hand and at
the right moment crush it with such force that it would be a long time
before it could raise its head again. Before it was over he hoped to
drag in prominent members of the Duma (or the Duma itself) and other
revolutionary leaders, and make an end of them. This plan need not astonish
us, for this method, in one form or another, had been made use of by the
autocracy time and again. Protopopov overreached himself, his scheme
miscarried, the soldiers about the capital went back on him, and the little
comedy that he had staged in which he was to play the leading part became
a tragedy and the shot which was intended for the revolution hit his royal
master and brought autocracy to the ground. In view of the fact that
Protopopov has since become insane, one wonders whether the man was
mentally well balanced at the time that he was in office. But the Tsar has
only himself to blame for his plight; he was warned against this nominee of
Rasputin, but he would not take advice.

Early in the week of March 5-12, 1917, the trouble began in the factory
districts. There were bread riots, car stoning, window smashing, and other
such acts, which are more or less common and no one paid much attention to
them. On Thursday, the disturbances spread to other parts of the city and
crowds began to gather on the Nevski, but the throng was orderly and the
police seemed to have little difficulty in keeping it on the move. Friday
the crowd was more bold: it marched up and down the streets, calling for
bread, singing revolutionary songs, and occasionally waving a red flag and
quickly snatching it back again. This, too, did not make much impression
for it is well known that in Russia strikes and disturbances have in view
political as well as economic betterment. Late Friday afternoon, while I
was walking on the Nevski, a company of mounted police and a large number
of Cossacks dashed by on the way to disperse a procession that was coming
towards me. When I came up to the Fontanka Bridge I noticed the crowd was
gathered about the Cossacks; it patted the horses and cheered their riders,
while the police were nowhere in sight. I listened to what was being said
and heard that the police tried to use their whips and swords on the people
and this angered the Cossacks so much that they attacked the police, killed
the captain, and drove them all away. It was no secret that there was bad
blood between the soldiers and the police; the former complained that while
they were suffering and fighting at the front, the latter were having an
easy time, enriching themselves by graft, and oppressing the soldiers'
families. The soldiers and the strikers started out with one idea--hatred
of the police. When the police had been dispersed, the Cossacks and
soldiers begged the people to move on, but they, especially the young
women students who were numerous, went up to them and pleaded with them to
espouse their cause. "Comrades," they would say, "come over on our side,
our cause is your cause." The rough, ignorant warriors were disturbed; they
did not like their jobs, and in a kindly way begged the men and women to go
home, but, as it did no good, for they massed again, the Cossacks rode in
a body into their midst and kept turning and turning until the crowd was
forced from the street onto the sidewalk. In the meantime, another company
of Cossacks formed a line across the street, from wall to wall, and swept
everybody before it into stores, courtyards, and other openings. Even this
did not do much good, for as soon as the horsemen passed, the mob fell in
behind and cheered the Cossacks. There was no roughness, but at the same
time it was easy to see that the crowd did not yet know to what extent the
army could be trusted.

By Saturday the inhabitants of the city began to feel the effect of the
disorder; cars were not running, telephones were barely working, factories
and shops were closed, banks and stores were locked, there was little to
eat, for the only provision on hand was water; every one who could filled
the tubs for fear the water mains would be blown up. The crowd on the
streets was larger than ever, more red flags were in evidence, but all this
failed to give the impression of a revolution. Such demonstrations had been
seen before; revolutionary talk was cheap and was not taken seriously.
As on the day before, the soldiers and Cossacks tried by gentle means
to disperse the crowd, but failed, for the men and women in the crowd
complained that they were hungry and pleaded with the military for the
sake of their own families to stand by the people. It was easy to see that
these guardians of the peace were in trouble, they knew that every word
said was true, and what was more to the purpose, members of their own
families were in the crowd. An officer who was sent with his company to
shoot on the people told how that same morning his own sister took part
in the demonstration and called for bread for her children. This was no
exceptional case. But as soldiers they must do their duty and keep order.
Realizing that the stratagems of the day before failed in their purpose,
the Cossacks tried other tactics on this day. They fell behind the
procession, and discharged their pistols in the air and dashed at full
speed into the mob. Woe unto him who did not get out of the way. But they
all did; in a second there was not a person on the street. It is still a
wonder how it was all done so quickly. As soon as the horsemen passed, the
crowd dropped behind them and raising their hats cheered them. "Comrades,"
they said, "come over to us, you know that the government is bad, you know
how the soldiers have been killed through its incompetency, you know that
our wives and children are hungry," and more such pleas. The Cossacks and
the other soldiers who tried to keep order were caught, they begged the
crowd to break up and go home, they pointed out that they had to do their
duty and that somebody might get hurt. It was reported that in some places
the soldiers did fire and kill several persons. During Saturday, men were
sent, it is not clear by whom, to the different factories to persuade the
workers to join in a great demonstration on Sunday. The military commander
of the city telegraphed to the Emperor for orders and the latter sent word
to shoot, if necessary, and to put down the uprising at any cost, and that
accounts for the posters that were put up on Sunday morning warning the
inhabitants not to gather in the streets because the soldiers would shoot
to kill. This had happened before and was no joke, and many people would
not leave their homes that day. Those who did had to walk; there was no
other way of getting about. Few people, on the whole, were on the street
that morning aside from the soldiers and Cossacks who were guarding the
bridges and keeping an eye out for disturbances. After luncheon I started
to make a call and as I passed the barracks of the Volynski regiment,
situated near where I lived, I saw a company of soldiers lined up, heard
the command to load, to shoulder arms, to march, and off they went to the
Nevski. I followed them for a distance and then turned aside and went my
way. In returning I had to cross the Nevski and found that all avenues
thither were guarded and that no one was allowed to go in that direction. I
managed, however, by showing my American passport, to get through the line
and reach the street. Excited people were moving up and down and from them
I learned that about three o'clock a number of people forced their way to
the Nevski and were fired upon by the soldiers and the machine guns
that were concealed. Among the killed of the day was a captain of police
who was knocked down by a Cossack.

Sunday night was full of excitement and fear and there were not many who
slept soundly. Firing was heard at different times but what it portended,
none of us could tell. It became evident that the situation was becoming
serious, yet we all felt that the Government could handle it. When I went
out on the street Monday morning, the first thing I saw was the placard
of the military commander announcing that unless the workmen went to the
shops, they would be sent to the front the following day. Groups of people
were talking excitedly and from them I learned that the Volynski regiment
had revolted and had killed its officers, because the day before they had
commanded the soldiers to shoot on the people. It seems that the soldiers
returned home much excited over their deed and full of remorse. In the
course of the night some of the revolutionary soldiers from the city
upbraided them and they were greatly incensed with their officers and the
Government. They, as well as other regiments, were particularly worked up
over the report that hirelings of the secret police dressed in soldiers'
uniforms went about firing on the crowd and that the new recruits, under
penalty of death, were commanded to shoot on the people in the streets.
When in the morning the officers congratulated the men on their deed of
yesterday, they jumped on them and murdered them. I heard that other
regiments had also revolted; but there were so many rumors afloat that
it was not easy to know what to believe. About four in the afternoon,
I started for home and found the Nevski full of frightened and nervous
people, and hardly any soldiers. No one seemed to know what to expect.
Sounds of shooting were heard and they were explained as the battle between
the regiments that had revolted and those that had remained loyal. In the
distance columns of smoke were seen and report had it that palaces were
burning. Again it was difficult to know the truth. As I proceeded on my
way, I was joined by the little minister of the British American Church,
where I had attended services the day before, where he had prayed fervently
for the Tsar and his family and asked God to put down the anarchists, and
other lawless men. We were discussing the situation, not knowing exactly
what to make of it. Perhaps the word revolution passed our lips but neither
of us nor those about us took it seriously. Near the Liteiny a gate opened
and about two dozen armed soldiers led by a petty officer stepped out and
marched towards the center of the street. Immediately the crowd, excited
and scared, scattered and ran for their lives but the soldiers motioned for
them to stop and told them that they would not shoot. We left them, and
proceeded on our way, trying as before to interpret what we saw. While
in the midst of our discussion we were struck by a new and unfamiliar
sound--tra-ta-ta, tra-ta-ta, and we instinctively knew that a machine gun
was firing. In a flash the streets were cleared and my minister and I found
ourselves sticking like posters against the wall. It was my first "baptism
of fire" and I had enough presence of mind to observe its effect upon
myself and others. Physically there was no effect for no one seemed hit. I
tried to locate the gun and the man behind it, but did not succeed. When
the firing ceased, I went on my way. As I neared the Nicholas station,
there came rushing forth from around the corner a crowd of hoodlums and
soldiers, with drawn swords, which they had taken from the officers,
and such other weapons as they could pick up, shouting, "Down with the
Government!" Then it dawned upon me that the revolution was on in earnest,
that the anarchists of yesterday's prayer had become the heroes of a great
cause. What struck me most of all was the kind of men and women who made
this world event. I watched them during the week, and they seemed to be
in great part boys and girls, hoodlums, students, poorly dressed men and
women, without organization, plans, or leaders. It is difficult to analyze
the various motives that brought them out into the street. Not one of the
so-called revolutionists was seen, heard, shot, or wounded. When it was
all over they appeared on the scene, rushing from Switzerland, the United
States, France, and other parts of the world, to make speeches and to
divide the spoils. It was a revolution without revolutionists, unless you
call the soldiers that, but they were not consciously making a revolution,
and when it was done, they were thoroughly surprised and frightened. There
are a number of reasons why the Government collapsed so easily. It was not
really overthrown but it toppled over like a rotten tree, and until
it fell, the people did not realize how decayed it actually was. Its
misconduct of the war, scandals like that of Rasputin, ministers such as
Protopopov discredited and disgraced the dynasty and when the end came, it
had few friends who shed tears.

Another important factor in helping the revolution was the large number
of students and liberals who served in the army. To fill the ranks and to
provide educated men for officers, it was necessary to call on university
students, experts in various fields of engineering, all of whom, more or
less, desired a liberal government. These men worked among the soldiers and
officers with a view to creating a feeling of distrust in the Emperor, and
the Government, and its incompetence and corruption gave plenty of material
for the propagandists. Loyalty to the dynasty was undermined and as soon
as one prop was removed, as soon as one company of soldiers went over, the
others followed and the whole edifice came tumbling down.

Still another factor was the large number of new recruits that were
stationed in the capital; they were as yet not well disciplined, obedience
had not yet become a second nature to them. Many of them had come from the
factories, some of them were personally acquainted with the men and women
who were in the demonstrations and therefore would not fire on them. Had
there been at the time in the city three or four old and well-disciplined
regiments, or had the Cossacks who were on hand not interfered with the
police, the uprising would have been crushed quickly and effectively as
similar affairs had been before.

Yet one other factor contributed to the success of the revolution and that
was the over-confidence of the Government. The soldiers had been loyal
until now and it never occurred to those in power that they might not
always be so. They made no special preparations other than placing machine
guns on roofs. They did not even make use of the armored cars. When they
realized that the army in the city could not be trusted, they called for
troops from the front but they came too late.

From the point of view of the monarchy it was unfortunate that Protopopov
sent the Emperor to the front after having secured from him a signed blank
to dismiss the Duma; for if the Tsar had been at Tsarskoe Selo, he might
have been prevailed upon to make some concessions and saved the dynasty for
a time at least.

By Tuesday morning, March 13, the revolution was generally accepted as a
_fait accompli_; it was believed that the old despotism was gone never to
return. This was followed by an outburst of idealism and patriotism such as
comes but once or twice in the life of a nation. Every Russian was bubbling
over with enthusiasm over the glorious future of his country. Liberty so
greatly desired, so long worked for, so much suffered for had at last come.
The intelligent and persecuted Russians, they who had spent years under the
shadow of the police, in prison, in exile, and in Siberia, had their day at
last and they were eager to realize their Utopia. Their first demand was
that all prison doors should be opened and that the oppressed the world
over should be freed. The Russian Revolution was not a class revolution, it
was brought about neither by the proletariat nor by the bourgeoisie and
the aristocracy; all classes contributed, it was a national revolution. So
worthless had the monarchy become that all the people were glad to get rid
of it and see it go. They who helped to bring about its ruin were the first
to deny it and seek safety; and even the Synod, in an almost unseemly
haste, took out the names of the imperial family from the prayer book.

The revolution was picturesque and full of color. Nearly every morning one
could see regiment after regiment, soldiers, Cossacks, and sailors, with
their regimental colors, and bands, and revolutionary flags, marching to
the Duma to take the new oath of allegiance. They were cheered, they
were blessed, handerchiefs were waved, hats were raised, cigarettes were
distributed as mark of appreciation and gratitude to these men, without
whose help there would have been no revolution. The enthusiasm became
so contagious that men and women, young and old, high and low, fell in
alongside or behind, joined in the singing of the Marseillaise, and walked
to the Duma to take the oath of allegiance and having taken it they felt
as purified as if they had partaken of the communion. Another picturesque
sight was the army trucks filled with armed soldiers, red handkerchiefs
tied to their bayonets, dashing up and down the streets, ostensibly for the
purpose of protecting the citizens but really for the mere joy of riding
about and being cheered. One of these trucks stands out vividly in my mind:
it contained about twenty soldiers, having in their midst a beautiful
young woman with a red banner, and a young hoodlum astride the engine, a
cigarette in one hand and a sword in the other. The streets were full of
people, or "tovarishchi" (comrades), as they called one another, not only
the sidewalks but in the very center, for the tramways were not running.
Great events were transpiring and every one who could came out to hear and
to see what was going on. There were no newspapers and the street was the
news center. Automobiles came dashing through scattering proclamations
and copies of the _Izvestiia_ (a news-sheet published by a committee of
newspaper men with the authority of the Duma); and as the crowd made a rush
to pick these up it looked for a moment as if the whole world was walking
on its head and feet at the same time. Those who were fortunate enough to
seize a paper ran home with it to read it to the family, those who were not
gathered around one of the many bonfires, made from the wooden imperial
eagles, crowns, and other insignia of royalty, to listen to the reading of
the news, usually by a student. The part played by the students during the
revolution has not received the attention it deserves. When all others were
hiding or excited it was the students who took charge of the leaderless
soldiers, found food for them, collected money for their welfare, and
told them what to do. It was interesting to watch with what deference the
soldiers looked up to them and hung upon their words. This importance was
not wholly lost upon the students, both men and women, and they read the
proclamations as if they were tablets of law handed down from heaven.
After the reading came the discussion. One of the favorite topics was the
comparative bloodlessness of the revolution (something like 169 killed and
1264 wounded) which proved that the Russian Revolution was superior to the
French or any other. Having started in this vein the discussion turned on
the mighty and noble deeds Russia was going to do now. Just as it once
freed Europe from the yoke of Napoleon so will it now liberate her from the
militarism and barbarism of William and give freedom to all the world, to
all nationalities, races, and creeds. The light of the world is to
come from Russia. The crowd meant it. The soldiers were in earnest and
patriotic--the praise showered upon them and the responsibility placed upon
them seemed to uplift them--the man with the hoe became a free citizen and
behaved as such. On Wednesday, March 14, the soldiers posted bulletins
in different parts of the city calling on their comrades to abstain from
liquor and violence and to prevent others from committing lawless deeds.
Not satisfied with mere words small companies of militia visited the places
where drinks were sold and emptied the barrels and bottles into the gutter.
For days the Astoria Hotel looked and smelled like a wrecked saloon after
Carrie Nation and her associates had stoned it.

For some time the whereabouts and intentions of the Tsar were unknown and
numerous rumors were afloat. Some said that he had committed suicide, that
he was in the city, that he was on the way, that he was under arrest, that
he had fled the country. Another interesting question was the form of the
new government, should it be a republic or a constitutional monarchy. Many
of the educated classes and members of the Duma advocated a constitutional
monarchy of the English type, while others, particularly the socialistic
groups, favored a republic, a democratic republic; whatever they meant by
that is not clear. Needless to say the great mass of people did not know
the difference between one kind of government and another but they shouted
as loudly as those who knew. One soldier demanded a republic like that of
England, another insisted on a republic with a tsar at the head, the wife
of the porter of the house where I lived cried as if her heart would break
because "they wanted a republic," and some of the peasant women in the
country clamored for the tsar because "if they take away the tsar they will
also take away God and what will then become of the muzhik." In one place
at the front several regiments almost came to blows over this question. An
orator ended his eloquent speech by saying that "from now on Russia will
have but one monarch, the revolutionary proletariat." This phrase puzzled
the soldiers, they also misunderstood the word "monarch" which they thought
to be "monakh" (monk). They therefore concluded that it was planned to put
a monk on the throne, and an argument arose whether they would have a monk
or not. Some were in favor and others opposed. By the time it got to the
next regiment the question was whether they would have the monk Iliodor as
their ruler. It was no longer a question whether Russia was to have a tsar
but whether the tsar should be a monk or not, and whether it should be
Iliodor or some other one.

Strange to say, as evening came a kind of fear seized the population,
particularly the more ignorant. It was difficult for them to shake off the
terror of the old police; all the time that they were talking against the
tsar they had a feeling that they were doing wrong, and that some one was
denouncing them. It was hard for them to believe that all that they saw and
heard during the day was real and that the old regime was powerless. Some
one would start a rumor that a monarchist general with an army was marching
on the city and that he would kill and burn. Early Friday evening, March
16, as I was walking down the street, soldiers ran by me shouting for every
one to get under cover for several hundred police from Tsarskoe Selo were
coming and that there would be street fighting. Frightened mothers grabbed
their little ones and hurried home, storekeepers closed the shops, porters
barricaded the gates, housewives extinguished the lights, and the streets
became as dark and as silent as a cemetery. This lasted for an hour or more
and then came more soldiers announcing that all was well, that the supposed
policemen were revolutionary soldiers who had come to take the oath of
allegiance.

The exultation reached its highest point when the first temporary
government, with Prince Lvov at the head, was announced. Every one was
pleased with the men selected, they were without doubt the ablest leaders
of the country, men who had always fought for the cause of liberty and for
the interests of the public. There was nothing but praise for them
and assurances of support. The fact that there was a "pravitelstvo"
(government) calmed the people and they gradually went back to their
old occupations, but as new men, with broader outlooks and with higher
aspirations.

The taking of the oath of office by the new Ministry was the last act of
that wonderful week to be unanimously approved by the people. When the
temporary government attempted to govern it was interfered with by the
Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies; the cry was raised by the
Socialist groups that it was they who had won the revolution and that they,
therefore, should have all the power. Since then the country has become
more and more divided against itself, love has turned into hate, joy into
sorrow.





THE JUGO-SLAV MOVEMENT

BY ROBERT J. KEENER

[Footnote: As used in this paper, the term Jugo-Slav comprehends the
Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, but not the Bulgars. It is not necessary here
to consider whether the latter are Slavs or Slavicized Tartars, but merely
to point out that since the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the Bulgars have
taken no part in the movement which has resulted in the creation of Jugo-
Slav nationalism. The word "jug" means "south" in Slavic. It is also
written "youg" and "[iu]g."]

If there are miracles in history, the Jugo-Slav movement is a miracle. It
is the story of a nation which entered its new home in the Balkans in the
seventh century and became divided geographically and politically, in faith
and written language, and in economic and social life, until at last its
spokesmen could truthfully say that it was divided into thirteen separate
administrative units dependent upon fifteen legislative bodies. [Footnote:
In 1915 the Slovenes inhabiting Carniola, Carinthia, Styria, Istria, and
Goerz-Gradisca, and the Serbo-Croats of Istria and Dalmatia, were under the
direct rule of Austria. Trieste and its district were a part of Austria.
The Serbs of Hungary belonged to Hungary proper for the most part; the
Croats by a fundamental agreement were entitled to autonomy in Croatia.
Fiume, the seaport of Croatia and Hungary, had an administration of its
own. Bosnia-Herzegovina possessed a diet and was under the dual rule of
Austria and Hungary. All the provinces or districts mentioned above were
governed by the two parliaments at Vienna and Budapest. There were, in
addition, two independent Serb states, Serbia and Montenegro. Down to 1912
Turkey ruled over a large number of Serbs.] How did it come about that this
evolution of twelve centuries, beginning with primeval unity and passing
through a political, economic, and social decomposition of a most
bewildering character, has once more arrived at national unity and is even
now demanding the last step--political amalgamation? Is it a doctrine or a
dream or is it a reality?


I

When the Jugo-Slavs first occupied the western half of the Balkan
peninsula, they were one in speech, in social customs and ancestry, and
were divided only into tribes. The Slovenes, who settled in the northern
end of the west Balkan block, were not separated from their Croat and Serb
kinsmen by the forces of geography, but rather by the course of political
evolution. On the other hand, the Croats became separated from the Serbs by
forces largely geographical, though partially economic and political, in
nature.

The Slovenes gave way before the pressure of the Germans who swept through
the Alps and down the Danube and forced the Slovene vojvodes to acknowledge
their suzerainty and accept their religion. The Germans would doubtless
have succeeded in obliterating them had not the Magyar invasion weakened
their offensive. The Slovenes, however, were left a wrecked nationality
whose fate became blended with that of the Habsburg possessions and
who against the forces of geography--which firmly bound them to the
Croats--were politically riveted to the Habsburg north. This division was
therefore the result of forces created by man and changeable by him. The
Croats settled in the northwestern half of the territory south of
the Slovenes; the Serbs roughly in the southeastern part of it. Here
geographical influences--the direction of the rivers and the Dinaric
ridges--combined with divergent political and economic possibilities,
produced a dualism. The Croats on the Save and its tributaries naturally
expanded westward and aspired to closer connection with the sea where their
struggle with the remnants of Roman civilization and a superior culture
absorbed their energies. They developed out of their tribal state
more quickly, while the Serbs, further inland and amid more difficult
surroundings, developed more slowly. The people who lived along the Save
aspired to control the Dalmatian coast which military and geographical
authorities claim can best be held from the mainland. The people who lived
in Montenegro or along the Morava, which was the gateway to the peninsula,
would naturally expand south and east toward the other cultural center,
Constantinople, and thus seek to dominate the Balkan peninsula. In both
cases, the attraction proved too much for feudal kings and led to the
formation of cosmopolitan empires instead of strong national monarchies.

The kingdoms of Croatia and Serbia thus parted company politically. The
former became a separate kingdom attached to Hungary in 1102 and to the
Habsburg dynasty in 1527, while the Serbs began their expansion under
the Nemanja dynasty late in the twelfth century and almost realized the
dominion over the Balkans under Stephen Du[s]an in the fourteenth century.

This political, geographical, and economic dualism became still greater
when in 1219 the Serbs cast their lot with orthodoxy. The Croats, like the
Slovenes, adopted Roman Catholicism, the Latin alphabet, and the culture of
Rome. The Serbs accepted Greek Orthodoxy, the Cyrillic alphabet, and the
culture of Constantinople.

The Slovenes became a part of the Austrian possessions of the Habsburgs;
the Croats fell under the dominion of the Hungarian crown and the republic
of Venice; and the Serbs succumbed to the Turks by the middle of the
fifteenth century. The loss of political independence brought with it
ultimately the loss of the native nobility, the sole guardians of the
constitutional and historical rights of the nations down into the
nineteenth century in central Europe. In addition, many towns were
Germanized and the middle class disappeared. The Jugo-Slavs, like the
Czecho-Slovaks, appeared in modern times as a nation which had lost its
native nobility and had been reduced to a disarmed, untutored, and enserfed
peasantry. In the absence of these leaders, the nation turned to its clergy
who in order to retain their hold on the peasantry must needs ever remain
national. But here again the misfortune which awaited the Jugo-Slavs was
that historically three religions had taken deep root, the Catholic among
the Slovenes and Croats, and the Mohammedan and Orthodox among the Serbs.
We may therefore conclude the first half of the historical evolution of
the Jugo-Slavs with the observation that political, economic, social, and
geographical divisions led to their downfall as a nation and that if they
ever desired to become one, each one of these chasms would have to be
bridged. A solution for each of these problems--the most difficult which
ever faced a nation--would have to be found; meanwhile the policy of the
four masters, the German, Venetian, Magyar, and Turk, would always be
"divide and rule," in other words, to perpetuate the divergencies.


II

The history of the evolution of the Jugo-Slavs from the sixteenth to the
twentieth century has been an effort to find the means of melting down
these differences until finally one--nationalism--accomplished the
purpose. Unity came first in the imagination and the mind, next in
literature and speech, and finally in political action. The four hundred
years beginning with the fifteenth and ending with the eighteenth century
will be remembered by the Jugo-Slavs as the age of humiliation. Only
Slavicized Ragusa and indomitable Montenegro kept alive the imagination
of the nation which was brought back to life by the half-religious,
half-national Slovene poets of the sixteenth century, by the Ragusan epic
poet [Gundulic], by the incessant demands of successive diets of the
ever-weakening Croatia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and by
the progressive and zealous Serbs of Hungary, who ever since the fifteenth
century in increasing numbers made their home there, refugees from the
oppression of the Turk, but who ever longed to push out from the frontier
and rebuild Serbia anew. [Krizanic], a Croat Catholic Dalmatian priest, a
firm believer in Jugo-Slav and Slavic unity in general, appealed to the
rising Russian empire to help save dying Slavdom.

While the Turkish and the Venetian empires decayed, the Austrian and the
Russian gained courage. By the end of the seventeenth century the house of
Habsburg had won back all except the Banat and in the eighteenth century
aspired to divide the Balkan peninsula in halves with the Russians. Along
with this future foreign interference in the affairs of the Balkans came
the Germanizing and centralizing "reforms" of Maria Theresa and Joseph
II, whose result was to cripple still further the few constitutional and
historical rights which remained to the Jugo-Slavs. But these "reforms" had
nevertheless salutary effects upon the nation of peasants. The enlightened
despots, spurred on by the loss of Silesia--which was at the same time a
great loss in revenue as well as prestige--sought to make good the loss by
the economic betterment and education of the peasantry. How else could an
agrarian state increase its revenue and supply able-bodied men for the
numerous armies which the overarmaments of Frederick II had brought upon
central Europe? [Footnote: Emphasis on this fundamental fact of Habsburg
history in the eighteenth century cannot be too strong. The writer of this
paper hopes soon to present archival proof of the far-reaching results of
the seizure of Silesia. The documents are to be found in the archives of
the _Hofkammer_ and _Ministerium des Innern_ in Vienna.] Centralization and
Germanization really helped to awaken the Slavs. Enlightened despotism gave
them the weapons of political struggle--education and economic resources.

Of the Jugo-Slavs, the Serbs of Hungary were the first to achieve national
and cultural consciousness. In the absence of a native nobility, but with
unusual economic opportunities at their command, they developed a wealthy
middle class--a rare thing among Slavs before the middle of the nineteenth
century. This class came into contact with nationalized western Europe and
found that the bulwark against national oppression was education for the
masses. The nation must be educated and must be economically sound in order
to undertake the political struggle against the Germans, the Magyars, and
the Turks. That was the background of Dositej Obradovi[c]'s literary labors
as he raised spoken Serbian ultimately to the literary language of the
Jugo-Slavs and of Karad[z]i[c]'s efforts which resulted in that wonderful
collection of Serbian national poems, and which clinched for all time the
literary supremacy of the _[S]to_ dialect. Serbian Hungary was the starting
place for Kara George's revolution which brought partial freedom in 1804
and autonomy in 1830 and thus planted the germ of the modern Greater
Serbia. Napoleon's Illyria, created in 1809, joined for the first time
Slovenes and Croats in one political unit, and the excellent administration
and the schools left an undying memory of what might be if the Habsburgs
cared. Vodnik, the Slovene poet, sang of Illyria and her creator, but it
was the meteoric Croat, Ljudevit Gaj, in the thirties, who so eloquently
idealized it as he poured heated rhetoric into the camp of the Magyars, who
after the Diet of 1825 began their unfortunate policy of Magyarization.
Illyria, though short-lived, became the germ of the Greater Croatia idea,
which, with Greater Serbia, existed as the two, not necessarily hostile,
solutions of the Jugo-Slav problem down to the Congress of Berlin. It was
as yet a friendly rivalry with the possible formation of two separate
units. The occupation of Bosnia in 1878 led to actual friction between
them. On the other hand, the annexation of the same province in 1908 had
just the opposite effect, for from that time the ultimate ideal was
no longer Greater Croatia or Greater Serbia in any selfish sense, but
Jugo-slavia, because, to use a platitude, Bosnia had scrambled the eggs.
Evidence of the fairly amicable relations between Slovenes, Croats, and
Serbs at the time of Gaj is not lacking. It was Gaj who reformed Croatian
orthography on the basis of the Serbian. Bleiweis and Vraz endeavored to do
the same in Slovene.

The revolution of 1848 demonstrated still further the friendly relations of
these potential rivals as national unifiers. For the first time, the Croats
and Serbs publicly fraternized and showed that the seemingly insurmountable
barrier of religious difference tended to disappear in the struggle for
national independence. In this sense the events of 1848--when the hand of
the foreign master was for the while taken away--have given confident hope
to those who believe that Jugo-Slav differences are soluble. Jela[c]i[c],
Ban of Croatia, the idol of the Serbo-Croats, was proclaimed dictator and
supported by the Croatian Diet at Zagreb (Agram) and the Serbian assembly
at Karlovac (Karlowitz). The Serb Patriarch Raja[c]i[c] and the young and
gifted Stratimirovi[c], provisional administrator of the Serb Vojvodina,
attended the Croatian Diet and the High Mass where Bishop O[z]egovi[c] sang
the Te Deum in Old Slavic. After Gaj, Raja[c]i[c], and Stratimirovi[c] had
failed at Vienna and Pressburg to bend the dynasty or the defiant Kossuth,
Jela[c]i[c] was empowered to defend the monarchy and bring back the
historical rights of the Triune Kingdom and the Serb Vojvodina. The dynasty
and the monarchy survived, but Jugo-Slav hopes and the promises they had
received were unfulfilled or soon withdrawn, as for instance the Vojvodina
in 1861. Absolutism reigned supreme from 1849 to 1860.

This disappointment led the Croats and Serbs to try cooperation with the
Magyars, who under Deak and Eoetvoes appeared to be anxious to conciliate
the non-Magyars in those uncertain years which began in 1859 and ended
in dualism. Austria lacked a great statesman, and the Prusso-Austrian
rivalry led the fearful and impatient Francis Joseph into the Compromise
(Ausgleich) of 1867. It was a work of haste and expediency and bound with
it the fate of the dynasty. Thereafter, the German minority in Austria and
the Magyar minority in Hungary were the decisive factors in the problems
confronting the Jugo-Slavs. Dalmatia was handed over to Austria; Croatia,
by a compromise, which it has never really accepted, to Hungary.

The Ausgleich between Austria and Hungary and Hungary and Croatia opened in
1868 a period which ended in 1905--it was a period, on the one hand of the
greatest decay and decomposition in the political life of the Jugo-Slavs,
and, on the other, of the greatest literary and intellectual unity as
shaped by Bishop Strossmayer and Peter II and Nicholas of Montenegro.

Bishop Strossmayer and the Slovene, Croat, and Serb academies, matica, and
learned societies, as well as men of literature, spoke, wrote, and pleaded
for unity in this period, in vain. But they and the universities of Prague
and Zagreb produced a younger generation which later took up the fight for
national unity and which abandoned individual political foibles and looked
over the boundaries of their provinces for inspiration.

Among the Slovenes, politics degenerated into the struggle for minor
concessions from the court at Vienna in regard to the Slovene language and
schools, while political parties multiplied freely through personal and
social differences. The lines which bound them to their kinsmen in the
south were weakest during this period.

The Croats found themselves no match for the astute Magyars who resorted to
packed diets, gerrymandering, bribery, and forgery. The Compromise (Nagoda)
of 1868 was as decisive as the murder of the farsighted Prince Michael
of Serbia in that year. It will be remembered that, in spite of his many
faults, he had made an agreement with Montenegro for the ultimate merging
of their states and, after allying himself with Rumania, had carried out
an agreement with the Bulgarian committee for the amalgamation of Bulgaria
with Serbia, thus obtaining a commanding influence in the Balkans. With his
death, Serbia fell into the hands of Milan and Alexander, whose weak and
erratically despotic reigns ushered in an era in Serbian history from which
she emerged in 1903, through the assassination and the extinction of the
last of the Obrenovics, a country without a good name, a nation which,
through no special fault of its own, had become degraded.

It was in the midst of this political decay that the Bosnians revolted in
1875 and that Serbia, Montenegro, Russia, and Rumania became involved in
the Russo-Turkish war. Space forbids but the most hasty survey of the
occupation and administration by Austria of Bosnia and the Herzegovina by
virtue of the Treaty of Berlin in 1878.

Bismarck, Francis Joseph, and Andrassy were swayed by differing motives
whose total result was that Austria was to become a Balkan power--the
outpost of the German _Drang nach Osten_--and that it was worth while
making a greater Serbia impossible, even at the cost of increasing the
number of Slavs in the Habsburg monarchy, which, now reenforced by the
Ausgleich, could stand the strain of advancing democracy and the necessity,
therefore, of granting further rights to the Slavs.

The occupation of Bosnia led to the first real quarrels in modern times
between Croat and Serb, for the former wanted Bosnia in Greater Croatia in
order to have connection with Dalmatia; the latter wished it annexed
to Greater Serbia, because it was Serbian. Magyar and German, further,
quarreled as to the status of Bosnia and left it unsettled. But one thing
was settled by the occupation in 1879 and the annexation in 1908. Neither
Greater Croatia nor Greater Serbia were any longer truly possible as a
final solution, only a Jugo-Slavia. The Greater Croatia received a mortal
blow by the addition of Serbs up to more than one third of the number of
Croats in Austria-Hungary, and Serbia faced the future either as a vassal
or as a territory which must be annexed. From that time until the present
the Habsburg monarchy, largely owing to the predominance of the Magyars in
Croatia, adopted a policy of prevention--Jugo-Slav nationality was to be
prevented. Viewed in that light the rule of Count Khuen-Hederv[a]ry, Ban of
Croatia from 1883 to 1903, in which time, according to Croats, he corrupted
a whole generation, turned Serb against Croat, and played out the radical
demands of the party of Star[c]evi[c] and Frank, is intelligible. The
policy of Count Khuen, which was based on corruption and forgery, on
press-muzzling and career-exploding, has since been imitated, and its
imitation has been largely responsible for this war.

It was not until the Serbs and Croats formed their coalition in 1905 that
the trial of strength had come. In Serbia, Peter Karageorgevitch ascended
the throne and reversed the pro-Austrian policy of his predecessor. This
it will be remembered was influenced until then by the Bulgarian policy
of Russia and by Serbia's defeat at the hands of Bulgaria in 1885. The
commercial treaty with Bulgaria in 1905, and the tariff war which Austria
began immediately afterward, pointed out which way the wind was blowing.

An era big with decisive events arrived. The Jugo-Slavs had learned that
union meant victory, division foreign mastery. Petty politics and religious
fanaticism were forgotten, and Jugo-Slav nationality was formed in the
fierce fires of Austro-Magyar terrorism and forgery and in the whirlwind
reaped from the Balkan wars.

It was too late to talk of trialism unless it meant independence, and, when
it meant that, it did not mean Austrian trialism. The treason trial by
which Baron Rauch hoped to split the Serbo-Croat coalition, and which was
to furnish the cause of a war with Serbia on the annexation of Bosnia in
1908, collapsed. It rested on forgeries concocted within the walls of the
Austro-Hungarian legation in Belgrade where Count Forgach held forth. The
annexation of Bosnia in 1908 completed the operation begun in 1878
and called for the completion of the policy of prevention. It was the
forerunner of the press campaign in the first Balkan war, the Prohaska
affair, the attack by Bulgaria upon Serbia and Greece, the rebuff
to Masaryk and Pa[s]i[c], the murder of Francis Ferdinand, and the
Austro-Hungarian note to Serbia. The mysteries connected with the forgeries
and this chain of events will remain a fertile field for detectives and
psychologists and, after that, for historians. For us, it is necessary to
note that, as the hand of Pan-Germanism became more evident, the Slovenes
began to draw nearer to the Croats and the Serbs. It remained only for the
Serbs to electrify the Jugo-Slavs --"to avenge Kossovo with Kumanovo"
--in order to cement their loyalty to the regenerated Serbs. Religious
differences, political rivalries, linguistic quibbles, and the petty
foibles of centuries appeared to be forgotten in the three short years
which elapsed from Kumanovo to the destruction of Serbia in 1915. The
Greater Serbia idea had really perished in 1915, as had the Greater Croatia
idea in 1878. In their place emerged Jugo-Slavia --the kingdom of the
Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes--implied by the South Slav Parliamentary Club
in Austria in their Declaration of May 30, 1917, and formulated by the Pact
of Corfu of July 7, 1917, which Pasie, premier of Serbia, and Trumbie, the
head of the London Jugo-Slav Committee, drew up. The evolution had been
completed. Nationalism had proved stronger than geography, stronger than
opposing religions, more cohesive than political and economic interests.
For this, the Jugo-Slavs have not only themselves and modern progress, like
railroad-building, to thank, but also the policy of the Habsburg monarchy,
the hopeful, though feeble, Note of the Allies to President Wilson, the
Russian Revolution, and the entry of the United States into the war.

For the historian, it remains to examine the depth and the character of the
movement. He should neither lament that it succeeded, nor frown upon it
that it did not come long ago when his own nation achieved its unity. That
it is a reality is proved by the fact that the Central Powers believed
its destruction worth this catastrophic war. A nation of eleven or twelve
millions holds the path to the Adriatic and the Aegean and the gateway to
the Orient and world dominion. It can help to make impossible the dream of
mid-Europe or of Pan-Germany.

The Jugo-Slav movement has ended in the formation of a nation which is
neither a doctrine, nor a dream, but a reality.




APPENDICES DECLARATION OF THE JUGO-SLAV CLUB OF THE AUSTRIAN PARLIAMENT

ON MAY 30, 1917

"The undersigned deputies, assembled as the 'Jugo-slav Club,' taking their
stand on the principle of nationalities and on the rights of the Croatian
state, declare that they demand that all the countries in which Slovenes,
Croats, and Serbs live shall be united in an independent and democratic
state organism, free from the domination of any foreign nation and placed
under the sceptre of the dynasty Habsburg-Lorraine. They declare that they
will employ all their forces to realize this demand of their single nation.
The undersigned will take part in the parliamentary labor after having made
this reserve...."

[Footnote: Referring to the Declaration of the Jugo-Slav Club, May 30,
1917, in the Vienna Parliament J. J. Grgurevich, Secretary of the South
Slavic National Council, Washington, D. C., writes:

"In order to understand correctly this Declaration, it is necessary to
state that the same was presented in the Vienna Parliament during war time,
when each, even the most innocent, word in regard to rights, principles of
nationality, and liberty of peoples, was considered and punished as a crime
and treason, by imprisonment, even death.

"Were it not for these facts, this Declaration would never contain the
words: 'and placed under the sceptre of the dynasty Habsburg-Lorraine.'
It was, therefore, necessary to insert these words in order to make
possible the public announcement of this Declaration; it was necessary to
make a moral sacrifice for the sake of a great moral and material gain,
which was secured through this Declaration among the people to which it was
addressed and which understood it in the sense and in the spirit of the
Declaration of Corfu."]




APPENDIX II

THE PACT OF CORFU

At the conference of the members of the late (Serbian) Coalition Cabinet
and those of the present Cabinet, and also the representatives of the
Jugo-Slav Committee in London, all of whom have hitherto been working
on parallel lines, views have been exchanged in collaboration with the
president of the Skupstina, on all questions concerning the life of the
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in their joint future State.

We are happy in being able once more on this occasion to point to the
complete unanimity of all parties concerned.

In the first place, the representatives of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
declare anew and most categorically that our people constitutes but
one nation, and that it is one in blood, one by the spoken and written
language, by the continuity and unity of the territory in which it lives,
and finally in virtue of the common and vital interests of its national
existence and the general development of its moral and material life.

The idea of its national unity has never suffered extinction, although all
the intellectual forces of its enemy were directed against its unification,
its liberty and its national existence. Divided between several States,
our nation is in Austria-Hungary alone split up into eleven provincial
administrations, coming under thirteen legislative bodies. The feeling of
national unity, together with the spirit of liberty and independence, have
supported it in the never-ending struggles of centuries against the Turks
in the East and against the Germans and the Magyars in the West.

Being numerically inferior to its enemies in the East and West, it was
impossible for it to safeguard its unity as a nation and a State, its
liberty and its independence against the brutal maxim of "might goes before
right" militating against it both East and West.

But the moment has come when our people is no longer isolated. The war
imposed by German militarism upon Russia, upon France and upon England for
the defense of their honor as well as for the liberty and independence of
small nations, has developed into a struggle for the Liberty of the World
and the Triumph of Right over Might. All nations which love liberty and
independence have allied themselves together for their common defense, to
save civilization and liberty at the cost of every sacrifice, to establish
a new international order based upon justice and upon the right of every
nation to dispose of itself and so organize its independent life; finally
to establish a durable peace consecrated to the progress and development
of humanity and to secure the world against a catastrophe similar to that
which the conquering lust of German Imperialism has provoked.

To noble France, who has proclaimed the liberty of nations, and to England,
the hearth of liberty, the Great American Republic and the new, free and
democratic Russia have joined themselves in proclaiming as their principal
war aim the triumph of liberty and democracy and as basis of the new
international order the right of free self-determination for every nation.

Our nation of the three names, which has been the greatest sufferer under
brute force and injustice and which has made the greatest sacrifices to
preserve its right of self-determination, has with enthusiasm accepted
this sublime principle put forward as the chief aim of this atrocious war,
provoked by the violation of this very principle.

The authorized representatives of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, in
declaring that it is the desire of our people to free itself from every
foreign yoke and to constitute itself a free, national and independent
State, a desire based on the principle that every nation has the right to
decide its own destiny, are agreed in judging that this State should be
founded on the following modern and democratic principles:

(1) The State of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, who are also known as the
Southern Slavs or Jugo-Slavs, will be a free and independent kingdom, with
indivisible territory and unity of allegiance. It will be a constitutional,
democratic and parliamentary monarchy under the Karageorgevitch Dynasty,
which has always shared the ideas and the feelings of the nation, placing
liberty and the national will above all else.

(2) This State will be named " THE KINGDOM OF THE SERBS, CROATS, AND
SLOVENES." And the style of the Sovereign will be "KING OF THE SERBS,
CROATS, AND SLOVENES."

(3) The State will have a single coat-of-arms, a single flag, and a single
crown. These emblems will be composed of the present existing emblems. The
unity of the State will be symbolized by the coat-of-arms and the flag of
the Kingdom.

(4) The special Serb, Croat, and Slovene flags rank equally and may be
freely hoisted on all occasions. The special coat-of-arms may be used with
equal freedom.

(5) The three national designations--Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes--are equal
before the law throughout the territory of the Kingdom, and everyone may
use them freely upon all occasions of public life and in dealing with the
authorities.

(6) The two alphabets, the Cyrillic and the Latin, also rank equally, and
everyone may use them freely throughout the territory of the Kingdom. The
royal authorities and the local self-governing authorities have both the
right and the duty to employ both alphabets in accordance with the wishes
of the citizens.

(7) All recognized religions may be freely and publicly exercised. The
Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Mussulman faiths, which are those chiefly
professed by our nation, shall rank equally and enjoy equal rights with
regard to the State.

In consideration of these principles the legislative will take special care
to safeguard religious concord in conformity with the spirit and tradition
of our whole nation.

(8) The calendar will be unified as soon as possible.

(9) The territory of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes will
include all the territory inhabited compactly and in territorial continuity
by our nation of the three names. It cannot be mutilated without detriment
to the vital interests of the community.

Our nation demands nothing that belongs to others. It demands only what is
its own. It desires to free itself and to achieve its unity. Therefore it
consciously and firmly refuses every partial solution of the problem of its
national liberation and unification. It puts forward the proposition of its
deliverance from Austro-Hungarian domination and its union with Serbia
and Montenegro in a single State forming an indivisible whole.

In accordance with the right of self-determination of peoples, no part of
this territorial totality may without infringement of justice be detached
and incorporated with some other State without the consent of the nation
itself.

(10) In the interests of freedom and of the equal right of all nations, the
Adriatic shall be free and open to each and all.

(11) All citizens throughout the territory of the Kingdom shall be equal
and enjoy the same rights with regard to the State and before the Law.

(12) The election of the Deputies to the National Representative body shall
be by universal suffrage, with equal, direct and secret ballot. The same
shall apply to the elections in the Communes and other administrative
units. Elections will take place in each Commune.

(13) The Constitution, to be established after the conclusion of peace by a
Constituent Assembly elected by universal suffrage, with direct and secret
ballot, will be the basis of the entire life of the State; it will be the
source and the consummation of all authority and of all rights by which the
entire life of the nation will be regulated.

The Constitution will provide the nation with the possibility of exercising
its special energies in local autonomies delimited by natural, social and
economic conditions.

The Constitution must be passed in its entirety by a numerically defined
majority in the Constituent Assembly. The Constitution, like all other laws
passed by the Constituent Assembly, will only come into force after having
received the Royal sanction.

The nation of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, thus unified, will form a
State of about twelve million inhabitants. This State will be the guarantee
for their independence and national development, and their national and
intellectual progress in general, a mighty bulwark against the German
thrust, an inseparable ally of all the civilized nations and states
which have proclaimed the principle of right and liberty and that of
international justice. It will be a worthy member of the new Community of
Nations.

Drawn up in Corfu, July 7/20, 1917.

The Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Serbia and Minister for Foreign
Affairs

(Sgd.) NIKOLA P. PASHITCH,

The President of the Jugo-Slav Committee

(Sgd.) DR. ANTE TRUMBIC,

Advocate, Deputy and Leader of the Croatian National Party in the Dalmatian
Diet, late Mayor of Split (Spalato), late Deputy for the District of Zadar
(Zara) in the Austrian Parliament. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL HINTS

THE following bibliography is nothing but a selected list and it has not
seemed advisable to include material which is to be found in periodicals.
[Footnote: For further information the investigator may consult _Slavic
Europe: A Selected Bibliography in the Western European Languages
comprising History, Languages, and Literature_. By R. J. Kerner. In press.]

Perhaps the most recent and best general statement of the Jugo-Slav problem
as a whole is to be found in A. H. E. Taylor's _The Future of the Southern
Slavs_ (New York, 1917). Another useful general work is by the Serb, V.
R. Savi[c]. The title is, _South-Eastern Europe: The Main Problem of the
Present World Struggle_ (New York, 1918). This is an American edition,
revised and enlarged, of the author's English work: _The Reconstruction of
South-Eastern Europe_ (London, 1917). The noted French historian, to whom
the western world owes much of its knowledge about Slavic history, Ernest
Denis, presents an able survey of the general problem in his _La grande
Serbie_ (Paris, 1915). It is written largely around Serbia, like Savi[c]'s
book. B. Vo[s]njak in _A Bulwark against Germany_ (London, 1917), and _A
Dying Empire_ (London, 1918), presents to western readers, for the first
time, the development of the Slovene districts of Austria and their
relation to that empire and to the Jugo-Slavs.

With regard to Austria-Hungary and the Jugo-Slavs in particular, the west
owes most to the penetrating studies of R. W. Seton-Watson, who formerly
wrote under the name of Scotus Viator. Before the war, Seton-Watson wrote
_The Southern Slav Problem and the Habsburg Monarchy_ (London, 1911),
wherein he discusses the whole problem from the point of view of the
Croats, in contrast to the Serbs. The author subsequently rectified this
point of view in _The Balkans, Italy, and the Adriatic_ (London, 1915);
_German, Slav, and Magyar_ (London, 1916); and _The Rise of Nationality in
the Balkans_ (London, 1917).

Numerous writers on Austrian and Balkan affairs have devoted parts of their
general works to the Jugo-Slav movement. Only a few typical ones can
be mentioned here. Paul Samassa, _Der Voelkerstreit im Habsburgerstaat_
(Leipzig, 1910), may be taken as representative of the German of the German
Empire. T. von Sosnosky's _Die Politik im Habsburgerreiche_ (Berlin,
1912-13, 2 vols.) is the work of an Austrophil, as is also W. von
Schierbrand's _Austria-Hungary: The Polyglot Empire_ (New York, 1917); H.
W. Steed's _The Habsburg Monarchy_ (London, 1914, 2d ed.) is one of the
ablest surveys in the English language. It is thoroughly worked out in the
general features, but slights many of the national and provincial aspects
of the Austrian question. V. Gayda's _La crisi di un impero_ (2d ed.,
1915), English ed., _Modern Austria_ (New York, 1915) is an unusually able
work by an Italian who sees clearly on every question except that of Italia
Irredenta. A. Toynbee's _Nationality and the War_ (London, 1915) is another
very useful summary of the question. The official Austro-Hungarian point of
view has been stated in such works, among many others, as Hitter von Sax,
_Die Wahrheit ueber die serbische Frage und das Serbentum in Bosnien_
(Vienna, 1909); L. Mandl, _Oesterreich-Ungarn und Serbien_ (Vienna, 1911);
C. M. Knachtbull-Hugessen, _The Political Evolution of the Hungarian
Nation_ (London, 1908, 2 vols.); and numerous official publications and
dossiers.

The works thus far mentioned were based on numerous studies in Slavic and
other languages, only a few of which can be mentioned here.

For the Slovenes one will look into Josef Apih's _Slovenci in 1848 leto_
(Lubla[n], 1888); Lon[c]ar's _Politi[c]no [z]ivljenje Slovencei_ (in
Bleiweis's _Zbornik._ Published by the Matica Slovenska, Lubla[n], 1909);
and Vos[n]jak's _Spomini_ (Lubla[n], 1906, 2 vols.).

The following will be found useful for the Croats: V. Klai[c], _Povjest
Hrvata_ (Zagreb, 1899 ff., 5 vols.); R. Horvat, _Najnovije doba hrvatske
povjesti_ (Zagreb, 1906); Milan Marjanovi[c], _Hrvatski pokret_ (Dubrovnik,
1903-04, 2 vols.); L. V. Berezin, _Khorvatsi[ia], Slavoni[ia], Dalmatsi[ia]
i Voenna[ia] Granitsa_ (St. Petersburg, 1879); I. Kulakovski[i],
_Illirizm_ (Warsaw, 1894); T. Smi[c]iklas, _Hrvatska narodna ideja_
(Rad Jugo-Slavenski Akad. 1xxx); V. Zagorsky, _Francois Ra[c]ki et la
renaissance scientifique et politique de la Croatie 1828-1894_ (Paris,
1909).

For the Serbs, a few of the fundamental works are: L. Kova[c]evi[c] and L.
Jovanovi[c], _Istorija srpskoga naroda _(Belgrade, 1893-94, 2 vols.); S.
Stanojevi[c], _Istorija srpskoga naroda_ (Belgrade, 1908); J. Risti[c],
_Diplomatska istorija srbije, 1875-1878_ (Belgrade, 1896-98); V. V.
Ra[c]i[c], _Le royaume de Serbie. Etude d'histoire diplomatique et de droit
international_ (Paris, 1901); F. P. Kanitz, _Das Koenigreich Serbien und
das Serbenvolk von der Roemerzeit bis zur Gegenwart_ (Leipzig, 1904-09, 2
vols.); S. Gop[c]evi[c], _Geschichte von Montenegro und Albanien_ (Gotha,
1914); F. S. Stevenson, _A History of Montenegro_ (London, 1912).[Footnote:
Lack of space forbids special mention of works by such scholars as Loiseau,
Vellay, Laveleye, Hron, Masaryk, Spalajkovi[c], Barre, [Footnote (cont.):
Kallay, Marczali, Prezzolini, Sokolovi[c], Novakovi[c], Cheradame, Evans,
Erdeljanovi[c].

The Jugo-Slav propaganda societies have published in English: _The Southern
Slav Appeal; Jugo-Slav Nationalism_ by B. Vo[s]njak; _The Strategical
Significance of Serbia_ by N. Zupani[c]; _The Southern Slav Programme;
A Sketch of Southern Slav History; Southern Slav Culture; Political
and Social Conditions in Slovene Lands; Austro-Magyar Judicial
Crimes--Persecutions of the Jugo-Slavs._ In French: _Ceux dont on ignore
le martyre (Les Yougo-Slaves et la guerre)_; _Les Yougo-Slaves--Leur
union nationale; Les Slovenes_ by Q. Krek; and the periodical _Bulletin
Yougoslave_.

H. Hinkovi[c] has written the most concise statement of the case of the
Jugo-Slavs in _The Jugo-Slav Problem_. Reprinted from the _World Court
Magazine_ (1917).]

There is a good survey of the history of the Jugo-Slavs in Russian: G.
Il'inski[i], _Kratk'i[i] kurs istori[i] [iu]zhnikh slav[ia]n_ (Kharkov,
1909).





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