Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  And everybody praised the Duke

  Who this great fight did win.

  ‘But what good came of it at last?’

  Quoth little Peterkin.

  ‘Why, that I cannot tell,’ said he,

  ‘But ’twas a famous victory.’

  150

  The Passing away of Tsardom in Russia

  April 7, 1933

  In my account of the course of the war I referred to the Russian Revolution and to its effect on the war. Apart from its effect on the war, the Revolution was in itself a tremendous event, unique in world history. Although it was the first revolution of its kind, it may not long remain the only one of its type, for it has become a challenge to other countries and an example for many revolutionaries all over the world. It is therefore deserving of close study. It was undoubtedly the biggest outcome of the war; and yet, it was the most unthought of, and the least desired, by any of the governments and statesmen that plunged into the war. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that it was the child of the historical and economic conditions prevailing in Russia, which were rapidly brought to a head by the vast losses and suffering caused by the war, and of which a mastermind and a genius in revolution, Lenin, took advantage.

  There were really two revolutions in the year 1917 in Russia, one in March, the other in November. Or the whole period may be looked upon as one continuous process of revolution with two high-water marks.

  I have told you in my last letter on Russia about the 1905 revolution, which also arose at a time of war and defeat. This was suppressed with brutality, and the Tsar’s government continued its career of unchecked autocracy, spying out and crushing all liberal opinion. The Marxists, and especially the Bolsheviks, were crushed, and all their principal men and women were either in the penal colonies of Siberia or in exile abroad. But even this handful of people abroad carried on their propaganda and study under the leadership of Lenin. They were all convinced Marxists, but the doctrine of Marx had been worked out for a highly industrialized country like England or Germany. Russia was still medieval and agricultural, with just a fringe of industry in the large towns. Lenin set about adapting the fundamentals of Marxism to Russia as it was. He wrote a great deal on this subject, and there were many arguments among the Russian exiles, and so they prepared themselves in the theory of revolution. Lenin believed in a job being done by experts and trained people, not merely by enthusiasts. If a revolution were to be attempted, it was his opinion that people should also be thoroughly trained for this job, so that when the time for action came, they should be clear in their minds as to what they should do. So Lenin and his colleagues utilized the dark years of repression after 1905 in training themselves for future action.

  Already in 1914 the urban working class in Russia was waking up and becoming revolutionary again. There were numerous political strikes. Then came the war, and this absorbed all attention, and the most advanced workers were sent to the front as soldiers. Lenin and his group (most of the leaders were in exile outside Russia) opposed the war from the very beginning. They were not carried away by it like most of the socialists of other countries. They called it a capitalists’ war, with which the working class had no concern except insofar as they could profit by it to win their own freedom.

  The Russian army in the field met with terrible losses, probably the greatest of all the armies involved. The Russian generals were, even for military men, who are not usually supposed to be endowed with much intelligence, remarkably incompetent. Russian soldiers, ill equipped with arms and often with no ammunition and no supports, were hurled at the enemy and sent to certain death by the hundred thousand. Meanwhile in Petrograd—as St. Petersburg had come to be known—and other big cities, there was tremendous profiteering, and huge fortunes were made by speculators. These “patriotic” speculators and profiteers were of course loud in their demand for a war to the finish. It would no doubt have suited them to have a perpetual war! But the soldiers and workers and the peasantry (which supplied the soldiers) became exhausted and hungry and full of discontent.

  The Tsar Nicholas was a very foolish person, a great deal under the influence of his wife, the Tsarina, an equally foolish but stronger person. The two surrounded themselves with knaves and fools, and nobody dared to criticize them. Matters came to such a pass that a disgusting scoundrel, known as Gregory Rasputin, became the chief favourite of the Tsarina, and through her, of the Tsar. Rasputin (the word Rasputin means “dirty dog”) had been a poor peasant who had got into trouble over stealing horses. He decided to put on a garb of holiness and adopt the paying profession of an ascetic. As in India, this was an easy way of making money in Russia. He grew his hair long, and with his hair his fame also grew till it reached the imperial Court. The only son of the Tsar and Tsarina, called the Tsarevitch, was a bit of an invalid, and Rasputin somehow made the Tsarina believe that he would cure the boy. His fortune was made, and soon he dominated the Tsar and Tsarina, and the highest appointments were made at his instance. He lived a most depraved life, and took huge bribes, but for years he played this dominating part.

  Everybody was disgusted by this. Even the moderates and the aristocracy began to murmur, and there was talk of a palace revolution— that is, a forcible change of Tsars. Meanwhile Tsar Nicholas had made himself the commander-in-chief of his army and was making a mess of everything. A few days before the end of the year 1916 Rasputin was murdered by a member of the Tsar’s family. He was invited to dinner and asked to shoot himself; on his refusal to do so, he was shot down. Rasputin’s murder was welcomed generally as a good riddance, but it resulted in greater oppression by the Tsar’s secret police.

  The crisis grew. There was a food famine and riots for food in Petrograd. And then, in the early days of March, out of the long agony of the workers, unexpectedly and spontaneously, grew the revolution. Five days in March, from the 8th to the 12th, saw the triumph of this revolution. It was no palace affair; it was not even an organized revolution carefully planned by its leaders at the top. It seemed to rise from below, from the most oppressed of the workers, and went groping blindly forward with no apparent plan or leadership. The various revolutionary parties, including the local Bolsheviks, were taken unawares and did not know what lead to give. The masses themselves took the initiative, and the moment they had won the soldiers stationed at Petrograd over to their side, success had come to them. These revolutionary masses must not, however, be mistaken for unorganized mobs bent on destruction, as the peasant outbreaks had often been in the past. The important fact about this March revolution was that the lead was taken in it, for the first time in history, by the class of factory-workers, the “proletariat”, as it has been called. And these workers, although they had no outstanding leaders with them at the time (Lenin and others being in prison or exile), had many an unknown worker who had been trained by Lenin’s group. These unknown workers in dozens of factories gave backbone to the whole movement and directed it into definite channels.

  We see here, as nowhere else, the role of the industrial masses in action. Russia of course was overwhelmingly an agricultural country, and even this agriculture was carried on in a medieval way. In the country as a whole there was little of modern industry; such of it as existed was concentrated in a few towns. Petrograd had many of these factories, and had thus a huge population of industrial workers. The March revolution was the work of these Petrograd workers and of the regiments stationed in that city.

  March 8 hears the first rumblings of the revolution. The women take the lead, and the women workers of the textile factories march out and demonstrate in the streets. The next day the strikes spread; many men workers also come out; there are demands for bread and shouts of “Down with autocracy”. The authorities send the Cossacks, who had always in the past been the main support of Tsardom, to crush the demonstrating workers. The Cossacks push the people about but do not shoot, and the workers notice with joy that the Cossacks are really friendly behind their official masks. Immediat
ely the enthusiasm of the people grows, and they try to fraternize with the Cossacks. But the police are hated and stoned. The third day, March 10, sees this spirit of fraternization with the Cossacks grow. A rumour even spreads that the Cossacks have fired at the police who have been shooting at the people. The police retire from the streets. Women workers go up to the soldiers and make fervent appeals to them; the soldiers’ bayonets go up.

  The next day, March 11, is a Sunday. The workers gather in the centre of the city, the police shooting at them from hidden places. Some soldiers also shoot at the people, who thereupon go to the barracks of this regiment and complain bitterly. The regiment is moved, and it comes out under its non-commissioned officers to protect the people; it fires on the police. The regiment is arrested, but too late. The revolt spreads to other regiments on March 12, and they come out with their rifles and machine guns. There is a great deal of shooting in the streets, but it was difficult to say who was shooting whom. The soldiers and workers then go and arrest some of the ministers (others have fled), and policemen, and secret service men. They liberate the old political prisoners in the gaols.

  The revolution had triumphed in Petrograd. Moscow followed soon after. The villages watched developments. Slowly the peasantry accepted the new order, but without enthusiasm. For them, there were only two questions that mattered: to possess land and to have peace.

  What of the Tsar? What was happening to him during these eventful days? He was not in Petrograd; he was far away in a small town from where, as Commander-in-Chief, he was supposed to be directing his armies. But his day was over, and, like an overripe fruit, he fell off almost unnoticed. The mighty Tsar, the great autocrat of all the Russias before whom millions trembled, the “Little Father” of “Holy Russia”, disappeared into the “dustbin of history”. It is strange how great systems collapse when they have fulfilled their destiny and lived their day. When the Tsar heard of the workers’ strikes and disturbances in Petrograd, he ordered a declaration of martial law. This was formally declared by the general in command, but the declaration was not broadcast in the city or pasted up, as there was no one to do this job! The government machinery had gone to pieces. The Tsar, still blind to what was happening, tried to return to Petrograd. The railway workers stopped his train on the way. The Tsarina, who was then in a suburb of Petrograd, sent a telegram to the Tsar. It was returned from the telegraph office with a note in pencil: “Whereabouts of addressee unknown”!

  The generals at the front and the liberal leaders in Petrograd, frightened by these developments, and hoping to save something from the wreck, begged the Tsar to abdicate. He did so, nominating a relative to take his place. But there were to be no more Tsars; the house of Romanoff, after 300 years of autocratic rule, had left the Russian stage for good.

  The aristocracy, the landowning classes, the upper middle classes, and even the liberals and reformers, looked upon the eruption of the working class with terror and dismay. They felt powerless before them when they saw that the army on which they relied had joined the workers. They were not yet sure on which side victory would lie, for it was possible that the Tsar might turn up with an army from the front and, with its help, crush the insurrection. So, fear of the workers on the one side and of the Tsar on the other, and an excessive anxiety to save their own skins, made their lot a miserable one. There was the Duma, which represented the landowning classes and the upper bourgeoisie. Even the workers looked up to it to some extent, but instead of taking the lead in the crisis or doing anything, its president and members sat in fear and trembling and could not make up their minds what to do.

  Meanwhile the Soviet took shape. To the workers’ representatives were added soldiers’ representatives, and the new Soviet took possession of one wing of the huge Tauride Palace, part of which was occupied by the Duma. The workers and soldiers were full of enthusiasm at their victory. But then the question arose: what were they to do with it? They had won power; who was to exercise it? It did not strike them that the Soviet itself might do so; they took it for granted that the bourgeoisie should take power. So a deputation from the Soviet tramped up to the Duma to ask them to start governing. The president and members of the Duma thought that this deputation had come to arrest them! They had no wish to be burdened with power; they were afraid of the risks involved. But what were they to do? The Soviet deputation insisted, and they were afraid of refusing them. So most reluctantly, and in fear of the consequences, a committee of the Duma accepted power, and to the outside world it appeared that the Duma was leading the revolution. What an extraordinary mix-up it was; we would hardly believe that such things could happen if we read about them in a story. But fact is often stranger than fiction.

  The Provisional Government which the committee of the Duma appointed was a very conservative body, and its prime minister was a prince. In another wing of the same building sat the Soviet, continually interfering with the work of the Provisional Government. But the Soviet itself was moderate to begin with, and the Bolsheviks in it were a mere handful. Thus there was a kind of double government—the Provisional Government and the Soviet—and behind both were the revolutionary masses which had carried through the revolution, and which were expecting great things from it. The only lead the hungry and war-weary masses got from the new government was that they must carry on the war till the Germans were beaten. Was it for this, they wondered, that they had gone through the revolution and driven away the Tsar?

  Just then, on April 17, Lenin arrived on the scene. He had been in Switzerland right through the war, and he was eager to come to Russia as soon as he heard of the revolution. How was he to do so? The English and French would not allow him to pass their territories, nor would the Germans and Austrians. At length, for reasons of their own, the German Government agreed to let him pass in a sealed train from the Swiss to the Russian frontier. They hoped, of course, and with reason, that the arrival of Lenin in Russia would weaken the Provisional Government and the war party, for Lenin was against the war, and they hoped to profit by this. They did not imagine that this more or less obscure revolutionary would end by shaking Europe and the world.

  There was no doubt or vagueness in Lenin’s mind. His were the penetrating eyes which detected the moods of the masses; the clear head which could apply and adapt well-thought-out principles to changing situations; the inflexible will which held on to the course he had mapped out, regardless of immediate consequences. The very day he arrived he shook up violently the Bolshevik party, criticized their inaction, and pointed out in burning phrases what their duty was. His speech was an electric charge which pained but at the same time vivified. “We are not charlatans,” he said; “we must base ourselves only on the consciousness of the masses. Even if it is necessary to remain in a minority—so be it. It is a good thing to give up for a time the position of leadership; we must not be afraid to remain in the minority.” And so he stuck to his principles and refused to compromise. The revolution, which had drifted for so long leaderless and without guides, had at last got its leader. The hour had produced the man.

  What were these differences in theory which separated the Bolsheviks from the Mensheviks and other revolutionary groups at this stage? And what had paralysed the local Bolsheviks before Lenin’s arrival? And again, why had the Soviet, after having the power in its hands, made it over to the old-fashioned and conservative Duma? I cannot go into these questions deeply, but we must give them some thought if we are to understand the continually changing drama of Petrograd and Russia in 1917.

  Karl Marx’s theory of human change and progress, called the “materialist conception of history”, was based on new social forms taking the place of old forms as these latter became out of date. As the methods of technical production improved, the economic and political organization of society gradually caught up to them. The way this took place was by continual class struggles between the dominant class and the exploited classes. Thus the old feudal class had given place in western Europe to the bourgeo
isie, which now controlled the economic and political structure in England, France, Germany, etc., and which, in its turn, would give place to the working class. In Russia the feudal class was still in command, and the change which had put the bourgeoisie in power in western Europe had not yet taken place. Most Marxists therefore thought that, inevitably, Russia would have to pass through this bourgeois and parliamentary stage before it could proceed to the last stage of the workers’ republic. The middle stage could not be jumped over, according to them. Lenin himself, prior to the revolution of March 1917, had laid down an intermediate policy of co-operating with the peasants (and not opposing the bourgeoisie) against the Tsar and the landowners, for a bourgeois revolution.

  The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and all believers in Marx’s theories were therefore full of this idea of having a bourgeois democratic republic after the English or French pattern. The leading workers’ representatives also thought this inevitable, and it was because of this that the Soviet, instead of keeping power in its own hands, went and offered it to the Duma. These people, as is so often the case with all of us, had become the slaves of their own doctrines, and could not see that a new situation had arisen, which demanded a different policy or at any rate a different adaptation of the old policy. The masses were far more revolutionary than the leaders. The Mensheviks, who controlled the Soviet, even went so far as to say that the working class should not raise any social question then; their immediate task was to achieve political freedom. The Bolsheviks temporized. The March revolution succeeded in spite of its hesitating and cautious leaders.

  With Lenin’s arrival all this was changed. He sensed the position immediately and, with the genius of true leadership, adapted the Marxian programme accordingly. The fight was to be against capitalism itself now for the rule of the working class in co-operation with the poorer peasantry. The three immediate slogans of the Bolsheviks became (1) democratic republic, (2) confiscation of the landed estates, and (3) an eight-hour day for the workers. Immediately, these slogans brought reality into the struggle for the peasantry and workers. It was not a vague and empty ideal for them; it meant life and hope.